When you’ve been pursuing a maritime injury claim for injuries from a boating accident or other maritime injuries, you may find yourself frustrated by the time a settlement is offered. At this stage, many maritime workers make the mistake of accepting whatever compensation is offered, which, in many cases, is a very low amount.
Our maritime injury attorneys can review your settlement offer and compare it to other similar cases. If you’re not being offered these 6 basic types of compensation for your injuries and damages, you may want to seek an attorney’s help with filing a lawsuit.
The 5 basic compensation types you should be looking for include:
Let’s go into each of these types of compensations in more detail.
Maintenance and Cure Benefits
According to maritime injury law, your employer is required to pay you maintenance and cure after your injury. Basically, maintenance is the amount of money it takes for you to sustain your living expenses (think rent, groceries, etc.), and cure covers your medical expenses up to a certain point. If your employer refuses to pay you maintenance and cure or if they do not pay the proper amount, you can file a maintenance and cure claim alongside your injury claim to require them to pay what they owe you. Maintenance and cure laws are there to protect and provide for injured maritime workers.
Past and Future Wages
If you’re able to prove that the company was at fault (even partially), then you’d be entitled to any lost wages you missed out on in the past and in the future. This means that they would have to pay you the wages you missed out on when you were injured as well as the wages you would have earned in the future.
Past and Future Medical Expenses
You would have the right to be paid for any medical expenses you paid in the past for your injury as well as any medical expenses you incur in the future. Many maritime injuries are very serious and require several surgeries, years of therapy, and other accommodations. All of that costs thousands and thousands of dollars which should be covered by your employer if they were negligent for your accident.
Injury-Related Costs
Your employer would be responsible for paying you for any expenses related to the injury. This might include:
Pain and Suffering
Lastly, you would be entitled to damages for pain and suffering. This would cover the physical and emotional effects of your injury and describes the intangible ways that a life is changed for the worse after an injury. Serious injuries can be life-changing and take an emotional and physical toll on a person and their families. Injured maritime workers are entitled to compensation for that.
Compensation Only Available Through Negligence
Remember that aside from maintenance and cure, these other types of compensation typically are only available when the injury was caused by the negligence of another. This is why it’s critical to have a Jones Act attorney on your side to help you prepare the evidence necessary to support your claim.
A case of negligence that leads to a serious boating accident or other offshore accident will involve many factors. The value of your Jones Act claim is just one of the many topics you’ll need to handle when seeking fair resolution to your negligence case, and an attorney can help.
Learn About Your Rights after a Boating Accident from a Jones Act Claim Attorney
Our New Orleans law firm, The Young Firm, has been helping injured maritime workers and Jones Act seamen for over 50 years with their offshore injury claims. Unlike other shipping law firms, we handle claims from all types of maritime occupations – from oil rig accidents to commercial fishing injuries.
Though we are based in Louisiana, we are ready and able to help injured victims throughout the U.S. Order our free Maritime Injury Law guide and/or our guide to what to do when you are injured offshore to learn all about your rights as an injured worker.
When you are ready to get started with your Jones Act injury case, we urge you to contact us today for a FREE case evaluation – call toll-free at 504-680-4100.
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