Maintenance and cure is the money a company has to pay a crew member who gets hurt on the job. The company that owns the boat pays for food and a place to live while the injury heals, and it pays the doctor bills. Nobody has to prove whose fault the accident was.
Then the first payment turns up and it is small. Most people look at it and wonder whether that is all they get. It does not tell you, and the company that employs you is not going to tell you either.
That company has resources you do not. It has people who handle injury claims all day, a lawyer it pays every year, and a doctor it picks itself. Here is why waiting hurts you: you can also sue over the injury itself, for your lost pay and for what you went through, but only for a limited time. Nobody is going to remind you when that time is up.
So let us go through it in the order it happens to you, and by the end you will know who counts as a seaman, what maintenance pays for, how much the daily money should be, when your employer can stop paying, what to do if it stops too soon, and what this money does not cover. I am Mark Hirsch, and I handle maritime and Longshore Act injury claims for crews working out of American ports.
Key Takeaways
- Your employer owes you maintenance and cure even when the accident was your own fault.
- Maintenance covers your food, your rent and your trips to the doctor. It does not cover your utility bills, your car insurance or your taxes, whatever you read online.
- Your employer can stop paying on the day a doctor says more treatment will not make you any better, and not before.
- A court can order extra money to punish a company that refuses to pay maintenance and cure. No other maritime claim lets you ask for that.
Step one: who counts as a seaman
Only a seaman gets maintenance and cure, and not everybody who works on the water counts as one. You have to pass two tests. Your job has to help the boat do its work, and you have to spend real time on that boat, in the same danger the rest of the crew is in. Lawyers call that Jones Act seaman status.
You will read online that you need 30 percent of your working time on board. The Supreme Court called that number a rule of thumb in Chandris v. Latsis in 1995, not a hard cutoff.
So you know whether the word fits you. The next question is the money, and maintenance comes first.
Step two: what maintenance pays for, and how much
Here is the short answer: maintenance is a daily payment for your food and your lodging on shore, plus your trips to and from the doctor, and nothing else.
- Your employer owes it from the day you leave the ship, even when you caused the accident yourself.
- You get nothing for the days you spend in hospital, because the hospital already feeds you and gives you a bed.
- The daily amount is what food and a room cost where you live. A court will not give you more than a seaman living alone in your area would spend.
Where that comes from: federal judges read juries a model instruction in these trials, and instruction 7.11 spells out all three. The Supreme Court set the measure in 1938 in Calmar S.S. Corp. v. Taylor, when it said maintenance should match what the crew is fed and housed to at sea.
Three words decide all of this, so here they are in plain English:
Most lists online add rent, utilities, taxes and car insurance. The instruction a jury hears names three things: food, lodging, and getting to and from a medical facility. Ask for your gas bill and you will not get it.
No law sets a dollar amount, so you have to prove the number yourself. Keep every receipt for rent and groceries from the week you came ashore. Those receipts set your daily amount, up to the limit above.
Maintenance is only half of it. The other half is cure, and cure decides how long your employer keeps paying.
Step three: what cure pays for, and when your employer can stop
Cure is the medical care, and your employer pays for it: the doctors, the nurses, the hospital stay, the medicine, and the equipment you take home. There is no limit on it. Your employer pays what the treatment costs.
Both halves start the day you leave the ship and stop when you reach maximum cure. Maximum cure is the day a doctor says more treatment will not make you any better. The Supreme Court set that endpoint in Farrell v. United States in 1949, so a seaman who never fully recovers still does not get paid for life.
Here is the part that catches people: in Vella v. Ford Motor Co. in 1975 the Supreme Court said your employer keeps paying until a doctor writes down that you will not recover. A doctor ends the payments, and the claims office does not get to do it for him.
Employers stop paying early all the time, though. The next question is how to get the money started again.
Step four: what to do if the payments stop too soon
When your payments stop, get three things on paper in the first week. You win these arguments with paperwork, and the paperwork gets harder to collect as the months go by.
- Ask for the reason in writing. Email the person who told you and ask which doctor said you had reached maximum cure, and on what date. A company that will not put a name and a date on paper has to make one up later.
- Get your own doctor to say the opposite. You want one line saying more treatment will still help you. Everybody argues from that line, so go and get it.
- Keep the receipts coming. You have to show what the daily amount should have been, so save the rent and grocery receipts for every week you went without.
A company that refuses can be made to pay your lawyer. In Vaughan v. Atkinson in 1962 the Supreme Court made a shipowner pay the seaman's legal fees, because the company's refusal was "willful and persistent" and the man had to hire a lawyer to get money he was plainly owed. The same opinion is worth quoting: "When there are ambiguities or doubts, they are resolved in favor of the seaman."
You get a second claim out of it as well. If going without the care made your injury worse, you can sue for that extra harm on its own, which the Supreme Court settled in Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line in 1932.
Getting your payments started again is not the same as getting paid for what the injury did to you. That money comes from somewhere else.
What this money does not cover
This money does not cover your lost wages, and it does not cover what the injury put you through. Nobody asks who caused the accident, which is why maintenance and cure stays small. To get paid for the rest you have to prove something, and to win a Jones Act claim you have to prove your employer was careless, under the statute itself.
You can also argue the boat or its gear was not fit for the work, which lawyers call unseaworthiness. Our Jones Act page goes through the careless side.
Taking the daily payment does not settle either of those. Federal courts treat maintenance as separate money from your lost wages, so a court can give you both, and that is not being paid twice. When a company tells you the daily payment covers your lost pay, it is making that up.
Only one of the three gets you punishment money. The Supreme Court took it away from unseaworthiness claims in The Dutra Group v. Batterton in 2019, and no Jones Act lawsuit has ever allowed it. That leaves one: a company that refuses to pay maintenance and cure on purpose, which the Court settled in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend in 2009.
Your deadline has nothing to do with maintenance and cure. The Jones Act statute of limitations gives you 3 years from the day you were hurt to sue. Miss it and you cannot sue at all, however well your employer has been paying you.
Here is where those two dates fall:
What we do when maintenance and cure stops
When maintenance and cure stops, we get it started again. We start with the company's own injury report and the doctor's note it acted on, because a payment stopped with no doctor behind it is the easiest one to restart. Most of these fights are decided in the first few weeks.
We also work out your daily amount from your own rent and grocery receipts, and hand the company that figure with the proof attached. Send us your paperwork and we will tell you which of the three claims you have.
Frequently Asked Questions
I got sick instead of hurt. Does maintenance and cure still apply?
It still applies. Your illness does not have to come from the work, and it does not have to be an injury at all. It only has to start, or show up, while you were in the service of the vessel. That covers your time on board and your time ashore on the ship's business.
Can my own carelessness reduce what I am paid?
It cannot reduce it. Your employer cannot pay you less because the accident was your own fault, and instruction 7.11 says so in as many words. There is one narrow exception: willful misbehavior, which means you hurt yourself on purpose or close to it.
I work the docks rather than the deck. Am I owed maintenance and cure?
You are not owed maintenance and cure, because a dockworker is not a seaman. Dockworkers, shipyard workers and harbor workers claim under the Longshore Act instead, which pays different money on different rules. Our guide to the Jones Act against the Longshore Act sorts out which one has you.
I left the job before I healed. Do the payments stop?
They do not stop. Your employer owes you the money because you were hurt on the vessel, not because you still work there, so quitting, a layoff and a firing all leave it in place. Keep your discharge paperwork and the date you left, because both get argued over later.
Payments Stopped While You Are Still Hurt?
If your daily payment has stopped, or the company's doctor has written you off as fit while your own doctor has not, the papers that decide it already exist: the injury report, the medical notes, and the receipts for what you have been living on. Contact Templer & Hirsch for a free consultation and we will tell you where you stand.
This article is general information about United States maritime law, not legal advice about your claim. Your own facts, your own records and the court you end up in decide what you are owed.