Maintenance and Cure Benefits for Injured Alaska Seamen

Anchorage, Alaska, admiralty and maritime attorneys

• Maintenance: Maintenance is a daily living allowance that takes into account reasonable rent or mortgage payments, utilities, and food expenses
• Cure: Cure includes all reasonable and necessary medical bills until you reach maximum medical improvement

You do not need to prove that your injury or illness was caused by the negligence or fault of the ship owner in order to get maintenance and cure benefits.

However, if the ship owner was negligent or the ship was unseaworthy, you can be eligible to recover more money in damages for disability, pain and suffering, future lost earnings, and disfigurement. If the ship’s owner/operator didn't have a written employment contract with you, you may be able to claim additional wages and penalties.

Why you need a lawyer to get maintenance and cure

Under maritime law, ship owners have a duty to provide maintenance and cure to injured seamen Even so, they don’t always do so willingly. After a maritime accident, you can expect your employer's insurance company to investigate the case, looking for ways to lower their payments to you. They may contest the amount of maintenance you are owed, deny you medical treatment or refuse to pay your medical bills. Willful refusal to pay maintenance and cure may allow you to claim punitive damages.

Regardless of what your employer or its insurance company may say, under maritime law, you are not required to sign a Release of All Claims in order to get your maintenance and cure benefits. You do not have to give a recorded statement before you talk with an independent attorney. In fact, you might be unwittingly sacrificing your rights if you do.

Understand your rights to maintenance and cure. Contact a maritime lawyer at Beard Stacey & Jacobsen, LLP.

Your right to maintenance

In almost all cases employers must pay an injured seaman a daily maintenance allowance until the seaman has reached the point of expected maximum medical improvement or is fit to return to duty. Employers and vessel owners in the states of Alaska and Washington for the past decade have paid daily maintenance in the range of $25-$40 per day. However, since the Supreme Court of the United States holding in Atlantic Soundings Co. v. Townsend many employers are now paying maintenance in the $ 50-60 range and sometimes higher depending upon the injured seaman's living circumstances. If you are released to light duty before you reach maximum medical cure you may still be entitled to maintenance.

Unearned wages: When a seaman becomes ill or injured during his employment contract and cannot continue the voyage, he is entitled to his contractual wages (including those wages not yet earned) until he is fit to return to duty or until the voyage ends.

Your right to cure

Your employer is required to pay all reasonable and necessary medical bills until you reach maximum medical cure. But ship owners and their insurance companies look for ways to pay as little as possible. It's important that your lawyer understand your rights in order to fight unfair denials.

• You have a right to choose your own doctor. The ship owner does not have a right to force you to receive treatment from their doctor. Good medical care is expensive. Sometimes insurance companies try to steer injured seamen toward healthcare providers who recommend treatments that are less costly and potentially less effective.
• The employer and its insurance company cannot deny you benefits based upon the recommendations of a doctor they hired for a second opinion if those recommendations are in conflict with your treating doctor. A dispute between doctors should be resolved in your favor.
• If the company doctor and your doctor disagree about whether you have reached maximum physical recovery, you are entitled to further benefits. For example, if your doctor reasonably recommended surgery, and a second opinion doctor recommended against surgery, you should be entitled to have the surgery.
• All treatment deemed to be curative should be considered cure. This means your bills should be covered for emergency transportation, for doctor and hospital bills, for diagnostic testing like x-rays, MRI and CT scans, bone scans, EMGs, EEGs, for medical prescriptions and for nursing services. You are also entitled to reasonable travel expenses to and from the doctors, physical therapy and in home health care. In some cases our firm has been able to obtain work hardening programs and pain clinic treatments for clients.
• When an injury aggravates a pre-existing medical condition, the vessel owner still has a duty to pay medical expenses. However, in some cases, if you failed to disclose a pre-existing condition on a pre-employment medical questionnaire, you may not be eligible for maintenance and cure benefits). Effectively handling pre-existing injury cases requires the assistance of experienced maritime counsel.

For effective representation in a maritime injury accident, contact the admiralty and maritime attorneys at Beard Stacey & Jacobsen, LLP to discuss your case in a free initial consultation.