Louisiana Maintenance and Cure Lawyers

Morris & Dewett has handled maritime injury cases for over 25 years.

What Is Maintenance and Cure Under Admiralty Law?

Maintenance and Cure

Two separate but related benefits owed to injured seamen under federal admiralty law. Maintenance is a daily living stipend paid while you cannot work due to vessel-related injury or illness. Cure is payment of all reasonable and necessary medical expenses until you reach maximum medical improvement.

admiralty law

The body of federal law governing ships, vessels, and maritime commerce. It applies on navigable waters and supersedes state law for maritime workers. Also called general maritime law.

Maintenance and Cure is a doctrine of admiralty law, not Louisiana state law. This distinction matters. Louisiana workers’ compensation rules do not apply to qualifying seamen. Federal maritime law does.

MMI

Maximum Medical Improvement. The point at which your treating physician determines your condition has stabilized and further treatment will not significantly improve the outcome. This is the endpoint for your employer’s cure obligation.

Maintenance covers your daily living expenses: housing, food, utilities, and basic necessities. It runs from the day you leave the vessel because of your injury or illness. Cure covers all reasonable and necessary medical treatment related to that injury or illness. Both run in parallel from the date of injury until you reach MMI.

You do not have to prove your employer was negligent to receive maintenance and cure. That is the core feature of the doctrine. Courts have historically treated seamen as “wards of admiralty” who deserve broad protection. The doctrine is construed in your favor when the facts are ambiguous.

Maintenance and cure is distinct from Louisiana maritime injury claims that require proving fault. It is a no-fault obligation that begins the moment you are injured in the service of a vessel.

Who Qualifies as a Seaman Under Maritime Law?

Seaman status is a legal question, not a matter of job title. Courts apply a two-part test established in the U.S. Supreme Court case Chandris, Inc. v. Latsis. First, the worker must contribute to the function of a vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission. Second, the worker must have a substantial connection to a vessel or identifiable fleet of vessels in navigation. Courts use a general benchmark of at least 30% of work time connected to vessel operations.

Vessels covered include offshore drilling rigs, supply boats, towboats and push boats, barges, dredges, ferries, and crew boats operating on Louisiana’s inland waterways and the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River, the Atchafalaya Basin, and the Red River system all support large commercial fleets where workers regularly qualify.

LHWCA

Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act. A federal workers’ compensation program covering shore-side maritime workers who load, unload, build, or repair vessels. It has its own benefits structure separate from maintenance and cure.

Not every maritime worker qualifies as a seaman. Longshoremen, harbor workers, and dock workers are typically covered by the LHWCA instead. The boundary matters because the two systems work very differently.

Employers frequently dispute seaman status to avoid paying maintenance and cure. This is their first and most common defense.

What Maintenance Covers: The Daily Rate and How to Maximize It

per diem rate

A daily dollar amount paid to a seaman during recovery. Federal law sets no fixed minimum. The actual rate is determined by what it costs the seaman to maintain a fixed abode while unable to work on the vessel.

Maintenance is paid as a per diem rate. There is no federally mandated floor. Many employment contracts set the maintenance rate at $35 to $50 per day, which is far below what it actually costs to pay rent and buy food in most Louisiana cities.

Courts have consistently awarded higher maintenance rates when a seaman can document that their actual daily living costs exceed the contract rate. Your lease agreement, rent receipts, utility bills, and grocery records are the evidence. If you live somewhere that costs $900 a month in rent alone, you can argue the contract rate does not reflect your real expenses.

The per diem runs from the date you leave the vessel due to injury or illness through the date you reach MMI. Maintenance does not cover lost wages. If you want to recover lost income, that requires a separate Jones Act negligence claim.

Your employer also has a duty to pay maintenance promptly. Unreasonable delay in starting payments can constitute willful withholding under admiralty law. This applies even when the employer has not formally denied the claim. Employers who hold benefits for weeks or months without justification face the same punitive exposure as employers who deny outright.

What Cure Covers: Medical Benefits Until MMI

Cure encompasses all reasonable and necessary medical treatment connected to your vessel-related injury or illness. The covered expenses include physician visits, hospitalization, surgery, physical therapy, diagnostic imaging, prescription medications, durable medical equipment, and transportation to medical appointments. If the treatment is medically necessary and causally related to your injury, the employer owes it.

You have the right to choose your own treating physician. Your employer cannot restrict you to a company-designated doctor. This is a critical point. When employers direct you to their own medical providers, those providers have a documented pattern of recommending early return to work and early MMI declarations.

IME

Independent Medical Examination. A medical examination requested by the employer or insurer and conducted by a doctor they select and compensate. IME findings frequently favor the employer and are used to dispute injury severity, causation, or MMI status.

Cure continues until your treating physician determines you have reached MMI. An employer who refuses to pay for surgery that your independent doctor recommends, and instead substitutes the opinion of a company IME doctor, may be acting in willful breach. Courts have found willful withholding where the employer relied on a hired medical examiner to override the treating physician’s recommendation for additional treatment.

If you suspect your employer has prematurely cut off cure, the next step is getting an independent medical evaluation on your own timeline, not on theirs.

When Does the Employer’s Obligation End? Understanding MMI

MMI does not mean full recovery. It means the condition has stabilized and further treatment will not materially improve the outcome. A seaman can reach MMI while still having significant permanent impairment. The cure obligation ends at MMI, but the seaman’s other claims do not.

The treating physician determines when MMI is reached. The employer, the employer’s insurer, and a hired IME doctor do not make that call. The determination comes through progress notes, clinical exam findings, functional capacity evaluations, and documented treatment outcomes. An employer who simply declares MMI without medical support, or who relies exclusively on a company-hired examiner, risks a willful withholding finding.

After MMI, you may still pursue an unseaworthiness claim under general maritime law or a Jones Act negligence claim for residual damages including lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and permanent impairment. The end of cure does not close your case.

A seaman who is declared temporarily totally disabled is still entitled to cure as long as medical improvement remains possible. Temporary total disability and MMI are different thresholds. Do not let an insurer conflate them.

Punitive Damages for Willful Withholding of Benefits

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend (2009) that punitive damages are available under general maritime law when an employer willfully and wantonly withholds maintenance and cure. This is a unique admiralty remedy. Louisiana state tort law punitive damage rules do not apply here.

Willful withholding means the employer knew the seaman was entitled to benefits and refused without a reasonable basis in the facts or the law. It is a high bar. Not every denial or dispute rises to willful withholding. Courts distinguish between good-faith disputes about eligibility and arbitrary or unreasonable refusals. Good-faith disputes do not support punitive damages. Arbitrary refusals where the employer had no legitimate factual or legal basis do.

When willful withholding is established, the seaman can recover punitive damages in addition to the unpaid maintenance amounts and unreimbursed medical costs. The seaman is also entitled to attorney fees. These fee-shifting provisions matter. They create a real deterrent against bad-faith delay.

Morris & Dewett has handled maintenance and cure disputes where employers delayed payment for months without any medical basis for their position. The punitive damages analysis starts with documenting what the employer knew and when.

Maintenance and Cure Alongside a Jones Act Negligence Claim

Jones Act

A federal statute (46 U.S.C. SS 30104) that gives qualifying seamen the right to sue their employer for negligence that caused an injury. It functions like a negligence claim for maritime workers, providing access to jury trials and recovery of lost wages, pain and suffering, and other general damages.

Maintenance and cure and a Jones Act negligence claim are separate, parallel remedies. Pursuing one does not eliminate the other. They serve different purposes and have different standards of proof.

Maintenance and cure is the no-fault baseline. It begins immediately upon injury without requiring proof that anyone did anything wrong. The Jones Act requires proving employer negligence. That takes longer, requires investigation, and usually resolves closer to trial or in settlement negotiations.

A Jones Act claim recovers what maintenance and cure does not: lost wages, loss of earning capacity, past and future pain and suffering, and other general damages. An unseaworthiness claim is a third parallel remedy. It holds the vessel owner liable when the vessel or its equipment was not reasonably fit for its intended purpose, regardless of whether the owner was negligent.

The prescriptive period for these claims differs from Louisiana state law. Louisiana’s two-year prescriptive period under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1 does not apply to admiralty claims. The prescriptive period for a maintenance and cure claim under admiralty law is three years under 46 U.S.C. SS 30106. Jones Act negligence claims also carry a three-year limitation. Do not assume Louisiana’s two-year rule applies. A maritime attorney who quotes you two years for a Jones Act case is working from the wrong body of law.

An experienced maritime attorney builds both claims in parallel from the start, preserving evidence for the negligence case while securing the no-fault benefits immediately. Morris & Dewett handles the full range of maritime remedies together, not in sequence.

See our Louisiana maritime injury lawyers page for a broader overview of the remedies available to maritime workers.

Employer Defenses and How to Counter Them

Four defenses appear in nearly every maintenance and cure dispute in Louisiana: seaman status challenges, service connection disputes, pre-existing condition arguments, and company doctor tactics. Knowing each in advance lets you build a stronger claim from day one.

Seaman Status Challenges

The Chandris two-part test is the most-litigated threshold issue in maintenance and cure. An employer who can successfully argue you are not a qualifying seaman eliminates the entire maintenance and cure obligation. The defense focuses on your work history: what percentage of your time was actually spent on a vessel, whether the vessel was in navigation, and whether your duties contributed to the vessel’s function. Document your work history in detail. Payroll records, work orders, scheduling records, and crewmate statements all matter.

Service Connection and Pre-Existing Condition Defenses

Employers frequently argue that your injury or illness was not incurred “in the service of the vessel.” They may claim it happened on shore, outside your work duties, or predated your employment. The service connection requirement is broadly construed by courts. It does not require that the injury occurred on the vessel itself.

The pre-existing condition defense is related but distinct. An employer may deny benefits if a seaman knowingly concealed a pre-existing condition when applying for work. But the concealment must be knowing and material. If you disclosed your prior condition, or if the condition was not relevant to your job duties, the defense fails. More importantly, even if a pre-existing condition exists, the aggravation doctrine means your employer still owes maintenance and cure if vessel service aggravated or accelerated the condition. Aggravation is enough. Full causation is not required.

The Company Doctor Problem

Employers direct injured seamen to company-designated physicians. Those physicians are selected and paid by the employer. Their findings predictably favor early return to work and early MMI. You have the right to seek reasonable and necessary treatment from physicians you trust. The company doctor’s opinion is not binding. Developing your own independent medical record from treating physicians who are not in the employer’s network is one of the most important things you can do after a maritime injury.

When an employer conditions continued cure payments on exclusive treatment with their doctor, that tactic exceeds their legal authority.

What to Do Immediately After a Maritime Injury in Louisiana

Report the injury in writing, seek medical treatment the same day, and begin tracking every expense. These three actions in the first 24 hours establish the foundation of your maintenance and cure claim. Every gap in documentation becomes a defense point for your employer.

Report the injury to the captain or vessel operator immediately and in writing. Oral reports can be disputed or forgotten. If you were hurt on a barge on the Atchafalaya or a supply boat in the Gulf, put it in writing that day. Request a copy of the vessel’s accident and incident report before you leave the vessel or the dock.

Seek medical treatment promptly. Gaps in treatment give employers room to argue the injury was not serious or was not work-related. If you cannot access a physician immediately, document why. Keep all medical records, discharge papers, and treatment notes.

Do not sign any document from your employer or their insurer without legal counsel. Releases, recorded statements, and medical authorization forms that are broader than needed for your claim can damage your case. This includes documents that appear routine.

Preserve physical evidence. Photograph the vessel, the scene, any defective equipment, and your visible injuries. If relevant equipment is still on the vessel, ask your attorney about a preservation demand to prevent repairs or replacement before inspection.

Track every expense. Rent receipts, utility statements, grocery bills, and out-of-pocket medical costs become the documentation for your maintenance rate calculation and your cure reimbursement claim. Start a file on day one and keep it current.

What Compensation Does Louisiana Maritime Law Allow After a Maintenance and Cure Dispute?

A successful maintenance and cure claim recovers three categories: unpaid maintenance (the daily stipend that was withheld), unreimbursed medical expenses paid out of pocket, and interest on those unpaid amounts. In cases of willful and wanton refusal, the seaman is also entitled to attorney fees and punitive damages under Atlantic Sounding.

The compensation structure for a pure maintenance and cure claim does not include lost wages or pain and suffering. Those damages require a Jones Act negligence claim or unseaworthiness claim filed alongside the maintenance and cure action. The two claims are almost always filed together when negligence is involved because each recovers what the other does not.

Morris & Dewett has handled both sides of this equation and has litigated maintenance and cure disputes where the punitive damages exposure changed the employer’s posture significantly.

You can review our case results at morrisdewett.com/results/. We do not quote settlement amounts in content, but the breadth of maritime and offshore work is documented there.