Why Seamen Have Rights Ordinary Workers Don’t
When an injury happens at a land-based workplace, the injured employee typically turns to workers’ compensation. Seamen are different. Offshore workers depend on their employer for shelter and food as well as wages, so maritime law has recognized for centuries that a vessel owner owes an injured crew member care and keep. That duty became the doctrine of maintenance and cure, and it applies to workers on vessels, oil rigs, offshore platforms, and jack-up rigs. (Dock and harbor workers who are not vessel crew have a different federal system, the LHWCA.)
What Maintenance Covers
Maintenance is a daily amount meant to replace the food and lodging you would have received aboard the vessel. In practice it covers rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance, property taxes, and food. It is not meant to cover everything, and the daily rates carriers offer are often low, sometimes set by an old union contract or simply asserted by a claims adjuster. If the amount you are being paid does not actually cover your household costs, that number can be challenged.
What Cure Covers & Who Chooses Your Doctor
Cure is all reasonable and necessary medical treatment related to your injury or illness: hospitalization, surgery, medication, physical therapy, and travel to appointments. Two points matter more than anything else on this page. First, you choose your own physician. Second, your employer owes the bills directly, and it does not get to route your care through insurance arrangements or negotiate the cost of your recovery.
Who Controls Your Medical Care
“The company doesn’t get to choose your doctor, doesn’t get to haggle with you over Medicare or insurance or any of that stuff. The company owes your medical bills.”
Many seamen are also owed unearned wages: the pay you would have earned through the end of the voyage or contract period. Companies rarely volunteer this, and it is separate from maintenance.
When Can Benefits Legally Stop?
Maintenance and cure continues until you reach maximum medical improvement (MMI), the point at which further treatment will not improve your condition. Reaching MMI does not require a full recovery; a worker with permanent limitations can be at MMI once additional care would only manage symptoms rather than improve function. Until an injured worker gets there, as Jason says, companies “are not supposed to stop or cut someone off of maintenance and cure.”
What Companies Actually Do
The pattern we see is not confusion about the rules. It is pressure. Benefits get cut early or threatened, forcing an injured worker to choose between holding out and paying the mortgage.
How Benefits Get Used Against You
“Companies use maintenance and cure as leverage to starve somebody out, make them accept a low-ball offer, or force them to see a doctor who’s gonna rush them back to work and make it more likely they get hurt again.”
The company-doctor version of this is the most dangerous. A physician selected and paid by the employer has every incentive to declare you fit for duty early. Going back offshore before you have healed is how a recoverable injury becomes a permanent one.
What If My Employer Won’t Pay Maintenance & Cure?
You have real remedies, and they are stronger than most injured workers realize. An employer that unreasonably refuses to pay owes not only the benefits themselves but also the damages that refusal caused, including any worsening of your condition. And where the refusal is willful and wanton, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend, 557 U.S. 404 (2009), that punitive damages are available on top. Attorney’s fees may be recoverable as well. If your benefits have been cut off or threatened, do these four things: get your own doctor’s written opinion on whether you have reached MMI, keep every letter and payment record from the company and its adjuster, do not sign a release to restart payments, and call a maritime lawyer before you agree to anything.
Protecting Your Rights as a Maritime Worker
Jason’s point about who you hire is the practical heart of this issue: most people never fight back, and companies know it. Pushing back takes a firm that knows these claims handlers and how they operate. We have recovered more than $25 billion for our clients, including a $193 million settlement for two men injured offshore, and we handle maintenance and cure disputes as part of the larger fight over what an injury actually cost you. Read more about maritime law and Jones Act claims, or see how we handle offshore injury cases.
If a company is playing games with your health, speak with an offshore attorney today. Call (888) 493-1629. The consultation is free and you pay nothing unless we win.
