Maintenance
Daily cash for food and lodging while you recover ashore. Owed from the first day you can't work, all the way through maximum medical improvement. Yours even if the injury was your own fault — no negligence required.
For the crews of every vessel underway in American waters — deckhands, roughnecks, fishermen, pumpmen, cooks. If you got hurt doing the work, the law is on your side. We'll show you how.
Before a dollar changes hands — before you hire anyone, before you sign anything, before an insurance adjuster returns your call — one question has to be answered first: are you a seaman?
The Jones Act is a seamen's statute. If you qualify, you are protected by the most favorable worker-injury law in America. If you don't, you're back in workers' comp, which pays less, covers less, and forgives less. The difference between the two can be a factor of ten.
Most of the lawyers who advertise for these cases can't pass their own bar exam on the seaman-status test. We wrote this chapter so you don't have to rely on them.
Different vessels, different hazards, different case values, different defense playbooks. Our coverage is organized the way the work actually is.
Injured seamen are entitled to more than almost any other worker in America. These are the four things the law gives you — most of them available from the day you get hurt, regardless of who was at fault.
Daily cash for food and lodging while you recover ashore. Owed from the first day you can't work, all the way through maximum medical improvement. Yours even if the injury was your own fault — no negligence required.
Every medical bill connected to the injury — surgery, hospitals, physical therapy, prescriptions, specialists — paid by your employer until you reach maximum medical improvement. You choose the provider. They do not.
The wages you would have earned for the rest of your contract, hitch, or voyage — paid in full. Often the largest piece of what you're owed, and often the first thing companies pretend doesn't apply to you.
Full damages — pain and suffering, lost future earnings, diminished earning capacity — triggered by the slightest employer negligence or unseaworthy vessel. This is the piece that makes the Jones Act the most favorable worker injury law in America.
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