46 U.S.C. § 30303
Section 30303 · Amount and apportionment of recovery
This is the Death on the High Seas Act
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 54 court decisions — leading case Chan v. Society Expeditions, Inc. (1994)
Most recently applied in Dutra Group v. Batterton (June 2019)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The recovery in an action under this chapter shall be a fair compensation for the pecuniary loss sustained by the individuals for whose benefit the action is brought. The court shall apportion the recovery among those individuals in proportion to the loss each has sustained.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
SectionSource (U.S. Code)Source (Statutes at Large) 30303 46 App.:762(a). Mar. 30, 1920, ch. 111, §2(a), 41 Stat. 537; Pub. L. 106–181, title IV, §404(b)(1), Apr. 5, 2000, 114 Stat. 131. The words “and just” are omitted as redundant to “fair”. The words “each has sustained” are substituted for “they may severally have suffered by reason of the death of the person by whose representative the suit is brought” to eliminate unnecessary words.