When an offshore worker is injured, they're already at a disadvantage. Employers typically offer injured seamen between just $15 and $40 per day while they recover on land. That number isn’t a legal calculation; it’s what companies have learned they can offer without much (if any) pushback. Most injured maritime workers accept it because they don’t know the law requires something very different.

Maritime law entitles most seamen, including offshore workers and vessel crews, to what is known as “maintenance and cure.” Maintenance and cure gives injured seamen two separate entitlements: a daily living allowance and full coverage of reasonable medical expenses. Both exist under general maritime law. Separately, the Jones Act negligence statute means you don’t have to prove your employer caused your injury to receive maintenance and cure. The right to these benefits comes with the job. What employers count on is that you won’t know exactly what those benefits are worth or how aggressively you can demand them.

At Clayton, Frugé & Ward, we’ve spent years handling high-stakes offshore injury and maritime law cases throughout Louisiana, securing over a billion dollars in verdicts and settlements for clients whose rights were underestimated. With these claims, it's especially important to be aware of the legal standard before you sign anything, as this can make all the difference between a fair recovery and leaving most of it behind.

What Maintenance & Cure Actually Means

Maintenance and cure are two distinct benefits under general maritime law. Maintenance is a daily living allowance covering your rent, food, and utilities while you’re unable to work. Cure is a separate obligation that includes payment of all reasonable and necessary medical expenses tied to the injury or illness you suffered in service of the vessel.

Both benefits continue until you reach maximum medical improvement, or MMI. That’s the point at which further treatment won’t improve your condition, not necessarily when you’re fully recovered or able to return to work. Employers and their insurers frequently conflate the two, using MMI as a reason to cut off benefits while an injured seaman is still months away from any realistic return to the vessel.

What the Law Requires Versus What Employers Offer

There is no federal statute that sets the maintenance rate at $15, $25, or $40 per day. Those figures persist because employers repeat them and workers don’t challenge them. The legal standard requires that the daily rate reflect the seaman’s actual cost of living on land: your real rent, utility bills, and food costs in the community where you live.

Your own documentation is enough to establish a higher rate. Lease agreements, utility statements, grocery receipts, and insurance costs can all support your claim. Across a recovery that runs three to six months, the difference between a corrected rate and the employer’s opening offer can reach several thousand dollars. That gap is recoverable, but only if you document it and demand it.

The Company Doctor Trap & Your Right to Choose

When you’re injured on a vessel in Louisiana, your employer will almost certainly direct you to a company-designated physician. You’re required to submit to that examination at least once, but you are not required to accept that doctor’s treatment plan or MMI determination as the final word on your condition.

Seamen have the legal right to choose their own treating physician for cure purposes, and the employer must pay for that treatment even when it isn’t the company’s preferred clinic. This matters because company-designated physicians are contracted with the employer. Their assessments, particularly on when MMI has been reached, frequently undervalue the injury and serve the employer’s interest in ending benefit payments early. An independent physician treating you directly has no financial incentive to minimize your condition.

How Employers Delay, Undervalue, or Deny Benefits

Employers and their insurers use several tactics to reduce what they pay. They may slow-roll payments, dispute when the injury occurred, or point to a pre-employment medical condition as grounds to deny the claim. However, in the last circumstance, a pre-existing condition doesn’t automatically disqualify you. If shipboard work aggravated or accelerated that condition, the law may still entitle you to full maintenance and cure benefits.

The threshold for qualifying is deliberately low. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Vaughan v. Atkinson (1962), all doubts and ambiguities in a maintenance and cure dispute are resolved in favor of the seaman. When an employer willfully and wantonly withholds benefits despite that standard, the consequences escalate. Under Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend (2009), an employer who deliberately refuses or delays payments can be exposed to punitive damages on top of the compensatory benefits owed. This reflects Congress and the courts’ recognition of how financially vulnerable injured maritime workers are during a recovery.

Maintenance & Cure Versus Other Injury Claims

Maintenance and cure operate independently of the other claims available to an injured Jones Act seaman. The full framework includes not only the maintenance and cure right but also a Jones Act claim against the employer for negligence, and, potentially, an unseaworthiness claim against the vessel owner for conditions that made the vessel not reasonably fit for its intended purpose. Additionally, it's worth noting that maintenance and cure don’t compensate for pain and suffering, lost future earning capacity, or emotional distress. Those categories require pursuing the Jones Act or unseaworthiness claims separately. As a result, accepting maintenance and cure payments as your only recovery, particularly without consulting an attorney, often means leaving the most significant portion of what you’re owed entirely unclaimed.

It’s also worth knowing that the Jones Act framework differs from the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, which covers certain dockworkers and harbor workers who don’t qualify as seamen under the Jones Act. Under the two-part test established in Chandris v. Latsis (1995), qualifying as a seaman requires that your duties contribute to the function of the vessel or the accomplishment of its mission, and that your connection to a vessel in navigation be substantial in both nature and duration. That status determines which set of rights applies to you.

Steps to Take After a Maritime Injury in Louisiana

The decisions you make in the first days after an injury on a vessel have a direct effect on your maintenance and cure claim. These steps can help protect your legal position from the start.

Report the injury immediately and in writing. Notify the vessel’s captain or supervisor as soon as possible and make sure the report is documented. Verbal reports open the door for disputes later about when the injury occurred and whether it happened during service to the vessel.
Seek independent medical care beyond the company clinic. Submit to the required company examination, then find your own treating physician. Keep every receipt for medical visits, prescriptions, and transportation from the date of injury forward.
Document your actual living costs. Pull together your lease or mortgage statement, utility bills, and food costs from the period of your recovery. These records are the foundation of a corrected maintenance rate demand.
Don’t sign anything from the employer or its insurer without legal review. Waivers and settlement documents presented early in the process are designed to resolve claims for less than their value. Jones Act claims, including maintenance and cure disputes, carry a three-year statute of limitations from the date of injury, but signing a release eliminates your rights regardless of that deadline.

Maritime injury cases in Louisiana that go to federal court are typically heard in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans, with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals as the controlling appellate authority. Both courts have well-developed maintenance and cure doctrine that favors the injured seaman, but only when the seaman has the evidence and legal support to invoke it.

Knowing Your Rights Is the Starting Point

Employers who operate vessels on Louisiana waters understand the maintenance and cure framework in detail. Their insurers have claims adjusters and legal teams who do too. The most effective protection an injured maritime worker has against underpayment isn’t patience. It’s knowing what the law actually requires and acting on that knowledge before signing a single document.

We’ve built our record on exactly those cases where what the law requires and what the opposing party offers are separated by a very wide gap. If you’ve been injured on a vessel in Louisiana and want to understand what your maintenance and cure claim is actually worth, contact us at (225) 209-9943.