Jones Act Law--5 Ways Your Company Will Fight Your Jones Act Maritime Injury Claim

The first way is that they're going to try to control your medical treatment after your accident and usually they do this by sending you to a company chosen doctor. You must insist that you go to a doctor that you know, that you trust and that you choose. Under maritime law you are absolutely allowed to choose your choice of doctor after your injury. This is a critical part of your case and you've got to insist that the company pays for your doctor not their doctor. One of the reasons you don't want to go see the company doctor is because usually the company doctor is communicating directly with the company about your medical condition. They do this usually on the telephone without you knowing it. A lot of times the company representative will meet directly with the company doctor and talk about your medical condition. This is your medical condition. You need to go to a doctor that you trust and that you know and somebody that's going to be honest with you more so than the company. Some people say they will go to the company doctor and if we ever disagree with him at that point we'll go to our own doctor. Unfortunately it's usually too late at that point because what you have is a long record of you going to a doctor and all of a sudden when he releases you, you suddenly disagree with him and you don't like him as your treating doctor. It's very, very hard in a case to overcome that type of evidence against you from a doctor that you willfully and voluntarily went to for so long. Our best advice is always go to a doctor that you chose and that you trust.



The second way that your company is going to fight your case is to take a tape recorded statement from you. Almost all companies do this. A lot of times they will tell you it's because they have to take a statement before they can give you medical treatment. I will tell you that it's absolutely not the law. You do not have to give a tape recorded statement in order for your company to pay for medical expenses or medical treatment for you. That is an excuse that they are using because they want to tape record you and get their version of the accident on the record with you. If you are going to give a recorded statement you need to be very careful because they are probably going to talk about the accident and how it happened and whether anybody was at fault. Whatever you say in that recording can be used against you in court. You want to be very careful if you are going give a tape recorded statement. It's not just going to be put in a drawer somewhere. If you end up having to file a claim later on, it will absolutely be used against you later. Another point about recorded statements is you don't have to answer all of the questions they ask you. You can very politely say I would rather not answer that question or I don't want to address that issue at this time. You may still be employed by the company, you may have friends out there, and you don't want to blame your friends for the accident but they may be at fault. In that situation, just tell the company person you don't want to talk about fault during your recorded statement. If they refuse that, then you know they are not on your side and they are only looking out for themselves.

A lot of times people get injured and the company right away will insist that you come back and do light duty work or sometimes they even push you back out to an oil rig or a boat where they've got you doing medium duty work. The company's going to have a lot of people watching you when you're back at work. You'll be amazed at how many people will come into court months and months later and swear up and down that they saw you doing very heavy activities out there. The second thing about going back to work real early is a lot of times the doctors that see you after you go back to work they're going to say you know "if he's back at work he's probably good enough to work so I'm going to go ahead and let him keep on working." It becomes this circle where because you're back at work, the doctors release you at that point. Another thought about going back to work is a big part of your case may be a loss of wage claim. A lot of guys working in the maritime industry make very good money and when they get hurt if they can't go back to full duty heavy labor they're going to lose a whole lot of wages. When you go back to work even if it's temporary what you're doing is proving the company's case against you. They look at it as you are proving that you can continue making as much as you used to make. It's very important that you remember that. You should never go back to work unless you believe you could be hired by another company in the shape that you're in. If your company's going to offer you some sort of sheltered employment that they're making up for you and they're accommodating you, you want to ask yourself can I go in off the street to another company and actually get that type of job. If you can't, then you shouldn't be out there working.

The fourth way your company fights your maritime claim is with video surveillance. If you have a claim against a maritime company most likely they're going to go out and try to get videotape surveillance on you. I want to make an important point about videotape surveillance though. It's usually not a person out there doing heavy, heavy manual labor that gets caught on videotape and that ruins their case. Usually video becomes real important because what you see on video is not necessarily what doctors are being told or what you're telling the company. Let me explain what I mean by that. Video is most damaging when you're seen on video without a cane that the doctor may have just given you and the doctor tells you always walk with this case. Video is most damaging when you say that you always walk with a limp but they see you on videotape walking normal without a limp. My point is it's not always you out there doing very heavy manual labor that's going to get caught on video that's going to ruin your case. Video becomes important if there's anything on that video that's contrary to what you're telling anybody else.

Now the last way that the company fights your case usually is by cutting off your maintenance benefits. A lot of times people are injured the company will send them weekly advances. They'll pay them what's known as maintenance. Sometimes they'll even have a little extra amount on the check that's called an advance. Our office is very familiar with advances. We're very familiar with maintenance. Now companies will tell you flat out if you hire an attorney we're going to cut off your advances and some of them even tell you we're going to stop paying you maintenance. They should never do that. Sometimes they're going to do it anyway though. If your company is threatening to cut off your maintenance or your advances if you hire an attorney the first thing you should do is consider if you have short-term disability or long-term disability. A lot of companies provide great benefits to the employees. If you have short-term disability or long-term disability you absolutely should file a claim under that policy regardless of whether your company's paying you or not. If you do that you've got the short-term, long-term disability to fall back on. You're not holding up hoping that the company's going to keep paying you those monthly checks. Companies will even tell you not to apply for short-term or long-term disability. A lot of times they'll do that because they want to control your case. They want you waiting for that weekly or monthly check in the mail from them. Then when they threaten to cut those off you're in a bad situation. We always, always recommend to our clients if you get hurt on the job you want to apply for short-term disability and then eventually long-term disability. You don't' want to be relying on the company to send you the weekly or monthly checks to rely on.