The short answer is that none of those five situations produces an automatic yes or no. Returning to work, leaving employment, having a prior condition, or needing mental-health treatment does not by itself settle eligibility. What settles it is the relationship between your service on the vessel, the medical evidence, and whether the employer can actually prove a recognized defense. Those are questions of fact and law that have to be reviewed, not assumed.
Two words matter throughout this page. Maintenance is the daily allowance for food and lodging owed to a seaman who is ill or injured in the service of the vessel. Cure is the employer's obligation to pay for reasonable medical care until the seaman reaches maximum cure. They arise together, but employment changes and medical-history questions often affect them differently, which is why the answers below treat them separately.
The Young Firm handles Jones Act and maritime injury matters for workers in New Orleans, across Louisiana, and along the Gulf Coast. This page is not a general overview of maintenance and cure — that lives on the firm's maintenance and cure claim page. It is a focused explanation of five eligibility problems that can lead an injured seaman to give up before anyone has looked at the file. If one of them is yours, you can contact The Young Firm and ask for a review of that specific concern; the closing section explains what a brief first account should include.
Eligibility Starts With Seaman Status and Illness or Injury During Vessel Service
Before any of the five scenarios below matters, two threshold facts have to hold.
First, you must be a seaman. Maintenance and cure is a remedy of federal general maritime law for members of a vessel's crew. Working near water, on a dock, in a shipyard, or on a fixed platform does not by itself make someone a seaman. The status test has its own rules, covered on the firm's page about whether you qualify as a seaman. Workers who fall outside seaman status are not without remedies — many are covered by the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, discussed on the firm's LHWCA page — but maintenance and cure is not their vehicle.
Second, you must have become ill or injured while in the service of the vessel. This phrase is broader than "while standing on deck." In Aguilar v. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, 318 U.S. 724 (1943), the Supreme Court held that a seaman injured while on authorized shore leave was still in the service of the ship, because shore leave is part of the life of a seaman subject to the call of duty. Service of the vessel describes an employment relationship, not a physical location.
"Becoming ill" in this sense is not the same as the first biological beginning of a condition. A condition with earlier origins that first manifests, flares, or becomes disabling during service can still fall within the obligation. A preexisting diagnosis does not automatically exclude a seaman — although it may open the door to the concealment defense discussed below. And symptom dates, diagnosis dates, and reporting dates are all evidence of when a condition manifested; none of them is legally conclusive by itself.
Two further qualifications:
- Employer fault is not ordinarily required. Maintenance and cure is not a negligence remedy. You do not have to prove the company caused your injury or illness. A seaman who falls ill from a condition no one caused, or who is injured through the ordinary carelessness that happens on any working vessel, is generally still within the obligation. Aguilar drew the line at the seaman's own willful misbehavior or deliberate indiscretion, not ordinary fault. If you are researching whether the company was negligent, that is a Jones Act question on the firm's Jones Act claims page, and it is a separate inquiry.
- Service of the vessel has a beginning and an end. Aguilar addressed a seaman on shore leave during an ongoing employment relationship. It does not automatically extend to a condition that first appears after a person has left maritime employment altogether. Timing is where most of the five scenarios below actually turn.
Because timing matters so much, it helps to separate dates that people often blur together:
| Date | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Onset or manifestation — when the condition first appeared, flared, or became disabling | Central evidence of whether you became ill or injured during service; the date you first noticed symptoms is evidence, not proof |
| Diagnosis — when a clinician named the condition | Often later than manifestation; a late diagnosis does not mean the condition arose late |
| Reporting — when you told the company | Affects credibility and the employer's notice, but is not the same as manifestation |
| Last day aboard / end of hitch | Marks a physical departure from the vessel; the service relationship can continue between hitches, so the last day aboard does not alone settle when service ended |
| Employment end — discharge or resignation date | Marks the end of the employment relationship, not necessarily the end of an obligation that already attached |
| Maximum cure — when a physician determines further treatment will not improve the condition | Defines the endpoint of cure and of maintenance |
Keep those dates in mind. Each scenario below is largely a question of where the illness or injury falls among them.
Does Returning to Work End Maintenance, Cure, or Both?
Qualified answer. Returning to work is not legally equivalent to reaching maximum cure, and it does not automatically end every maintenance and cure benefit. Cash maintenance and medical cure have to be assessed separately, based on the nature of the new work, whether the new job supplies food and lodging, your medical restrictions, and whether curative treatment is still ongoing. This answer assumes seaman status and an illness or injury arising in the service of the vessel.
Many injured seamen go back to some form of work because the maintenance rate does not cover their bills, or because the company stopped paying. The instinct to work is not something a lawyer should talk you out of, and nothing here suggests you should stop working or ignore a physician's restrictions. But you should understand that the employer and its adjuster may treat your paycheck as proof that the obligation has ended, and that conclusion deserves scrutiny.
Why maintenance and cure react differently to new work
Cure is tied to medical need. The employer's duty to pay for reasonable treatment continues until maximum cure — the point at which, in the language of Farrell v. United States, 336 U.S. 511 (1949), the condition is as far improved as treatment can make it. Whether you are drawing a paycheck has nothing to do with whether your surgeon still recommends a follow-up procedure or your physical therapist still expects functional gains. A worker on light duty who is still in active, curative treatment has a strong argument that cure continues.
Maintenance is tied to subsistence. It exists because a seaman who is ill or injured is cut off from the food and quarters the vessel would otherwise supply. This is where the nature of the new work matters:
- Light duty with the same employer, ashore or aboard. If the company is again providing meals and lodging, that fact bears on maintenance. If it is paying wages for shore work but not providing subsistence, the analysis is different again.
- Full duty back aboard. A genuine full-duty return with a physician's release and no ongoing treatment is the strongest signal that the obligation has ended — but even then, the medical record, not the timecard, is what should establish maximum cure.
- Work for a different employer. Wages from an unrelated job raise the question addressed in Vaughan v. Atkinson, 369 U.S. 527 (1962), where a seaman whose employer refused to pay maintenance took work as a taxi driver out of necessity. The Court declined to let the employer offset those earnings against the maintenance it had wrongfully withheld. Vaughan is powerful in the right facts — an employer that has stopped paying and a seaman who works to survive — but it should not be stretched into a universal rule that outside earnings never matter. The circumstances of the return, the employer's payment history, and the type of work all require review.
A work release is not a maximum-cure opinion
An employer may point to a "return to work" or "fitness for duty" slip as the end of the claim. Those documents answer a different question. A work release says something about your present capacity to perform certain tasks. A maximum-cure opinion says that treatment has reached the point where further care will not improve your condition. Vella v. Ford Motor Co., 421 U.S. 1 (1975), reinforces that the endpoint is a medical determination that the condition is permanent — and the Court refused to let an employer cut off benefits retroactively based on a later finding. A worker can be released to restricted work while still being months away from maximum cure.
That said, a work release is not irrelevant. It is evidence, and an employer will use it. The point is that it has to be read alongside the treatment plan, the restrictions, and any actual prognosis — not substituted for them.
Hypothetical, not a firm case. A tankerman injures his shoulder during a transfer. He is paid maintenance for three months, then payments slow and stop. With a mortgage due, he takes a forklift job at a warehouse with a lifting restriction from his orthopedist, who still has him scheduled for a second injection and possible arthroscopy. His former employer's adjuster writes that because he is "working full time," maintenance and cure are concluded. On these facts, the questions are: Has any physician said he is at maximum cure? Is the warehouse supplying meals or lodging? Did he take the job because maintenance was not being paid? None of those questions is answered by the fact that he clocked in. The outcome depends on the records — but the adjuster's letter is a position, not a decision.
Detailed questions about how the daily amount is calculated belong on the firm's page about maintenance amounts and living expenses, and the full maximum-cure analysis is on the page about maximum medical improvement and benefit duration.
Does Being Fired End an Existing Maintenance-and-Cure Obligation?
Qualified answer. Termination of employment and termination of a maintenance-and-cure obligation are two different events. Where a seaman's illness or injury arose in the service of the vessel before discharge, the firing itself does not ordinarily erase the obligation that had already attached. Whether benefits continue depends on the same eligibility facts that applied before the discharge — manifestation during service, medical need, and maximum cure — and on whether the employer can prove a legally recognized defense, not merely state a reason for the firing.
A discharge letter can feel like a verdict on everything, including your medical care. It is not. The company's decision to end the employment relationship is an employment decision. The maintenance-and-cure obligation attaches when a seaman becomes ill or injured in the service of the vessel, and its natural endpoint is maximum cure, not the date on a termination notice.
Separate the stated reason from a proven defense
An employer may discharge an injured worker for a stated reason — a positive drug screen, a policy violation, a claimed failure to report — and then treat that reason as if it also defeats maintenance and cure. Aguilar speaks to one kind of defense: a seaman's own conduct that brings on the injury. Ordinary negligence does not bar recovery; willful misbehavior or deliberate indiscretion that causes the injury can. That is a defense about how the injury happened. It is not a rule that any misconduct anywhere in the employment file ends the obligation, and it is separate from the concealment defense discussed below. Where an employer's stated reason sounds like misconduct, three things have to be examined:
- Did the alleged conduct actually cause the illness or injury? Misconduct unrelated to the condition is a different matter from misconduct that produced it.
- Can the employer prove it, or is it an allegation in a letter? An HR file is not a judicial finding.
- Did the obligation arise before the conduct occurred? A defense to a new injury is not necessarily a reason to cut off treatment for an old one.
Nothing here promises reinstatement, job protection, or a retaliation claim. Those are employment-law questions that this page does not address, and you should not assume they exist without a lawyer reviewing your situation. The question here is narrower: whether the company still owes maintenance and cure for the condition that arose during your service. The termination notice, the stated reason, and the status of your treatment on the discharge date are the records that matter most; the checklist later on this page collects them.
Signed documents deserve a careful read
If the company asked you to sign anything at or after discharge — a separation agreement, a release, a "final settlement" of expenses — do not assume it means what the adjuster says it means, and do not assume it is valid simply because you signed it. Releases of seamen's claims receive particular scrutiny under maritime law. This page is not a guide to release law; it is a flag that a signed document is a legal issue for a lawyer, not a closed door.
If your payments have already stopped, how to respond to the cutoff is a separate topic; the firm's maintenance and cure claim page is the place to start.
Can I Seek Maintenance and Cure After Quitting?
Qualified answer. Resigning after an illness or injury that arose during vessel service is different from first becoming ill after your maritime employment ended. Quitting does not, by itself, forfeit an obligation that had already attached. But resignation is also not a substitute for the real questions: when the condition manifested, whether it manifested in the service of the vessel, and whether the employer can prove a legally recognized defense on the actual facts.
Workers quit for many reasons after an injury — the boat is going back out and they cannot physically do the job, the company is pressuring them to return before they are ready, or they simply cannot afford to wait on payments that are not arriving. Whatever the reason, the resignation is one event on a timeline, and it must be placed in relation to the others.
Two situations that look alike but are not
Resignation after the condition manifested during service. If you were injured on the vessel or began experiencing symptoms of an illness during a hitch, the obligation arguably attached at that point. Your later decision to leave does not retroactively make the injury or illness something that happened outside service. The employer may argue that the way you left the vessel or the job affects the claim, or that you walked away from treatment it offered. Whether any such argument has legal force depends on the specific facts — what you did, when, and why — and it is the employer's argument to prove, not a conclusion you should accept because you filled out a resignation form.
A condition that first arose after employment ended. If you left maritime work in good health and were diagnosed with something months later, the question is harder, because service of the vessel had ended. Aguilar's shore-leave reasoning does not automatically cover a person who is no longer employed. That does not necessarily end the matter — some conditions develop slowly, and a diagnosis date is not a manifestation date — but it means the medical chronology has to do real work.
A later diagnosis proves neither earlier onset nor ineligibility
A diagnosis six weeks after your last hitch does not prove the condition started after you left. It also does not prove it started before. Symptoms recorded in medical visits during employment, complaints to crewmates or supervisors, sick-bay entries, and the natural history of the particular condition are what connect a diagnosis to a period of service. The absence of that evidence is what makes many post-resignation claims difficult, and the presence of it is what makes some of them viable.
Nothing on this page recommends quitting or staying in work that a physician has said is unsafe for you. Those are decisions about your health and livelihood. The point is that whichever choice you made or are considering, the eligibility question is decided by dates and records, not by the label "resigned."
A Preexisting Condition Is Not the Same as a Proven McCorpen Defense
Qualified answer. Under the framework applied in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — which hears federal maritime appeals from Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi — a prior diagnosis alone does not defeat maintenance and cure. The employer bears the burden of proving the McCorpen defense, which requires showing that the seaman concealed or misrepresented medical facts, that those facts were material to the hiring decision, and that there is a causal connection between the undisclosed condition and the condition now claimed. If any element fails, the defense fails. Other circuits phrase the defense differently; this discussion is limited to the Fifth Circuit's formulation.
Few things unsettle an injured seaman more than an adjuster's letter announcing that the company has "discovered" a prior back injury, an old MRI, or a previous claim and is denying maintenance and cure on that basis. The letter often sounds like an accusation of fraud. It is important to understand what the law actually requires the employer to prove.
The defense and where it comes from
The Fifth Circuit recognized the defense in McCorpen v. Central Gulf Steamship Corp., 396 F.2d 547 (5th Cir. 1968), and restated its elements in Brown v. Parker Drilling Offshore Corp., 410 F.3d 166 (5th Cir. 2005). Reduced to worker-facing evidence questions, the three elements are:
| Element | The evidence question |
|---|---|
| Concealment or misrepresentation | Exactly what did the hiring paperwork or the pre-employment physical ask, and exactly what did you answer? If nothing was asked, did you have reason to believe the employer would consider the condition important? |
| Materiality to hiring | Did the employer ask about the condition, and was the question rationally related to your physical ability to do the job? Under Brown, a specific medical question that is rationally related to job duties generally establishes materiality; the employer does not have to prove it would actually have refused to hire you. A seaman can defeat this element by proving that the employer would have hired him even if the condition had been disclosed — but that takes actual proof of the employer's hiring practice, not a bare assertion or inconclusive evidence that you might have been hired anyway. |
| Causal connection | Is the old condition genuinely connected to the current one — same body part, same disease process — or is the employer linking a prior knee complaint to a current shoulder injury? |
Requested disclosures versus no inquiry at all
McCorpen drew an important line. Where the employer requires a pre-employment medical examination or questionnaire and the seaman fails to disclose a condition that was asked about, the concealment element can be satisfied by the objective failure to disclose. Where the employer conducts no examination and asks no medical questions, the seaman is expected to disclose a past condition only where he had reason to believe the employer would consider it important — a considerably harder showing for the company, but not an automatic defeat of the defense.
This does not mean silence is always safe or always fatal. It means the document, or the absence of one, frames the analysis. A lawyer reviewing a McCorpen denial starts by obtaining the actual questionnaire and comparing each question, word for word, against the prior medical records the employer is relying on.
Intent is not necessarily what you think
Under the Fifth Circuit's formulation as applied in Brown, the "intentional concealment" element does not require proof that the seaman subjectively intended to deceive. A failure to disclose a condition in response to a direct medical question can satisfy the element regardless of what the seaman was thinking. This cuts both ways: a worker cannot defeat the defense simply by saying he forgot, but an employer relying on a vague question that did not fairly call for the information, or on no question at all, has a different and harder case to make.
Situations that require closer scrutiny of the defense
Each of the following is a fact-specific consideration, not an automatic defeat of the defense:
- You disclosed the condition. If the prior injury appears on the questionnaire or in the pre-employment physical, concealment is very difficult to establish as to that condition. The exact wording of what was asked and what was written still has to be compared.
- The employer already had the information. A company that treated you for the prior condition, or held your records from a previous stint of employment, has a hard time claiming it was misled — but the employer's actual knowledge, and who within the company had it, is a question of fact.
- The question was ambiguous. "Have you ever had back problems?" and "Have you ever been treated by a physician for a spinal condition?" are not the same question, and a truthful answer to one may not be a truthful answer to the other.
- The old condition is unrelated. Brown requires a causal link between the withheld information and the injury now claimed. A prior diagnosis affecting a different part of the body, or a different disease process, does not supply that link merely because both are medical.
A word about honesty
None of this is advice to withhold information from anyone. Give complete and truthful medical histories to your treating clinicians, and give your lawyer the whole picture, including the parts you are worried about. A McCorpen defense is evaluated on the documents, and the worst position for an injured seaman is one where his own lawyer learns about a prior condition from the employer's motion. The defense is often raised; it is not always proven.
Can Cure Cover Mental-Health Treatment?
Qualified answer. Maintenance and cure applies to illness as well as injury, and nothing in the general maritime law confines "illness" to physical conditions. A psychiatric illness that manifests in the service of the vessel may support a cure obligation for reasonable, curative mental-health treatment. But a diagnosis or a prescription alone does not establish entitlement. Seaman status, manifestation during service, the curative purpose of the treatment, any applicable defense, and the maximum-cure endpoint all still have to be examined.
Seamen who need psychiatric care after an event aboard a vessel — a fatality on deck, a fire, a collision, a serious injury to a crewmate, or the slow accumulation of a hostile or dangerous working environment — may assume that maintenance and cure is only for broken bones and bad backs. It is worth stating plainly: the remedy covers illness, and psychiatric illness is illness.
What is not being said here
Two distinctions keep this discussion honest.
Cure is not emotional-distress damages. Cure pays for treatment. It does not compensate you for the experience of suffering. Compensation for emotional distress, if available at all, arises under the Jones Act or general maritime negligence and unseaworthiness claims, and it has its own rules and limits. Do not read this section as a guide to recovering damages for mental anguish. The firm's Jones Act compensation page addresses damages.
A physical injury is not a prerequisite, but neither is every mental-health expense automatically covered. The obligation attaches to reasonable treatment aimed at improving the condition. Whether a given course of therapy or a given medication falls within cure depends on the clinical purpose, the same way a course of physical therapy does.
What a lawyer looks at
- Documented symptoms and manifestation. When did symptoms appear relative to your service on the vessel? Was there a triggering event during a hitch, or did symptoms emerge later? Are there contemporaneous records — a visit to the medic, a report to the captain, a call to a family member? These are evidence of when the condition manifested, not proof by themselves.
- Diagnosis by a qualified clinician. A diagnosis establishes what the condition is; it does not by itself establish when it manifested or that it did so in service.
- Treatment purpose. Is the treatment aimed at improvement — therapy with a defined course, medication management to stabilize a condition — or is it maintaining a stable condition without expectation of further improvement? Farrell teaches that the obligation ends at maximum cure, and psychiatric conditions reach maximum cure like any other. The line between curative and merely supportive treatment is where many psychiatric cure disputes are fought, and the detailed duration analysis belongs on the page about maximum medical improvement and benefit duration.
- Prognosis. Has any treating clinician expressed an opinion that further treatment will or will not help?
Prior psychiatric history
If you had a prior psychiatric diagnosis, the employer may raise the same McCorpen defense discussed above. The analysis is identical: what was asked, what was answered, whether it was material, and whether the prior condition is causally connected to the current one. A history of treated anxiety a decade ago is not automatically connected to post-traumatic symptoms following a vessel fire. Prior history calls for careful disclosure analysis, not automatic exclusion.
Two practical cautions
Do not delay urgent mental-health care to wait for a legal opinion. If you are in crisis, get care first. Authorization and payment disputes can be sorted out afterward, and the firm's page on medical treatment rights under cure addresses provider and authorization issues.
And do not send detailed psychiatric records through a general contact form or an unsecured email. When you first reach out, it is enough to identify your providers and the approximate dates of treatment. Ask how sensitive records should be transmitted before you send them.
Preserve the Timeline and Records Behind Your Eligibility Question
A useful chronology does not require a complete file. Gaps are normal, and noting what is missing is more useful than trying to reconstruct it. Preserve originals. Do not alter, annotate, or backdate anything — an accurate record with gaps is far more useful than a "complete" one whose integrity can be attacked.
Records relevant to every scenario
| Record | What it helps resolve |
|---|---|
| Hiring paperwork and any pre-employment medical questionnaire or physical | Whether a McCorpen defense has any footing |
| Prior medical records you know the employer may cite | Whether a prior condition was disclosed, known, or unrelated |
| Job description, vessel name, and hitch schedule | Seaman status and the boundaries of service |
| Dates symptoms appeared and dates you reported them | Evidence of manifestation during service |
| Treatment records, restrictions, and prescriptions | Ongoing curative need |
| Work releases, fitness-for-duty slips, and any maximum-cure or permanence opinion | Whether the endpoint has actually been reached |
| Every letter, email, and text from the company or adjuster about benefits | The employer's stated position and its timing |
| Payment records for maintenance and medical bills | What was paid, when, and when it stopped |
Scenario-specific additions
If you returned to work: start date, employer, duties, hours, pay records, any restrictions you are working under, and whether the job provides meals or lodging.
If you were fired: the termination notice, the stated reason, any communications leading up to it, the status of your treatment on the discharge date, and anything you signed at separation.
If you quit: your resignation communication, the date, the reason you gave, your last day aboard, anything you told a supervisor or medic before leaving, and anything you signed.
If your treatment is psychiatric: initially, just the names of your providers and the dates of treatment. Hold detailed records until a secure method of transmission has been confirmed.
A five-scenario summary
| Scenario | Maintenance question | Cure question | Decisive facts | First step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Returned to work | Is subsistence now being supplied? Why did you return? | Is treatment still curative, regardless of the paycheck? | Work release vs. maximum-cure opinion; type of work; payment history | Gather treatment plan and job details |
| Fired | Did the obligation attach before discharge? | Was curative treatment still ongoing on the discharge date? | Manifestation date; stated reason vs. provable defense; signed documents | Gather the termination letter and medical chronology |
| Quit | Did the condition manifest during service? | Does the medical chronology tie the treated condition to service? | Resignation date vs. manifestation; circumstances of leaving | Gather resignation communication and symptom history |
| Preexisting condition | Can the employer prove all three McCorpen elements? | Is the current condition causally connected to the prior one? | Exact questionnaire wording; employer knowledge; causal connection | Obtain the hiring questionnaire |
| Mental-health treatment | Did the condition manifest in service? | Is the treatment curative rather than merely supportive? | Manifestation; treatment purpose; prognosis | Identify providers and dates |
Why the Work Release, Hiring Form, and Medical Timeline Must Be Read Together
An employer's explanation for questioning your benefits is usually one document: a work release, a termination letter, a hiring questionnaire, or an adjuster's letter. Read alone, each seems to answer the question. Read together with the rest of the file, each often answers a different question than the one the employer says it answers.
A work release speaks to present work capacity; the maximum-cure question is answered by the treatment plan and prognosis, which the release rarely mentions. A hiring questionnaire that says "no" to a question about prior back injuries is meaningful only once compared to the exact records the employer is relying on and to the exact wording of the question. A termination letter establishes the date employment ended, but the date the obligation attached is in the medical chronology, and the two rarely line up.
A careful eligibility review places those documents side by side and asks whether the employer's stated reason actually holds up against the employment and medical evidence. It also identifies which kind of dispute you actually have, because they are handled differently:
- An eligibility dispute — the employer says you were never entitled, or that entitlement ended for one of the reasons on this page.
- A rate dispute — entitlement is conceded but the daily amount is too low, addressed on the maintenance amounts and living expenses page.
- An authorization dispute — the employer is paying but refusing a particular treatment or provider, addressed on the medical treatment rights under cure page.
- A maximum-cure dispute — the employer says treatment is finished and your physician disagrees, addressed on the maximum medical improvement and benefit duration page.
- A payment-conduct dispute — the employer's handling of the claim may itself have been unreasonable or willful. A disputed denial is not automatically bad faith; enhanced remedies have their own standards, which this page does not address.
A single file often contains more than one of these. Sorting them is part of the work. What a review cannot do is guarantee that an error will be found or that benefits will be reinstated. Some denials are well founded. The value of the review is knowing which kind you are facing before you accept it.
Hypothetical, not a firm case. A deckhand is denied maintenance and cure for a herniated disc on the ground that she failed to disclose a prior back injury on her hiring form. The form asked, "Have you ever had surgery?" She had not; she had been treated conservatively for a lumbar strain years earlier and answered truthfully. Comparing the question to the records changes the analysis entirely — a truthful answer to the question actually asked is not concealment of what that question covered. Whether the defense fails depends on the rest of the form and the records, but the adjuster's letter treated as settled something the document itself does not support.
Legal Authorities Behind These Eligibility Answers
The answers on this page rest on the following judicial authorities. Each is identified by court so that readers and other professionals can distinguish controlling Supreme Court precedent from Fifth Circuit precedent that governs federal maritime cases in Louisiana. Summaries here are necessarily condensed; the opinions themselves control.
U.S. Supreme Court
- Aguilar v. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, 318 U.S. 724 (1943) — breadth of "service of the ship"; a seaman's ordinary negligence does not bar recovery, but willful misbehavior or deliberate indiscretion that brings on the injury can.
- Farrell v. United States, 336 U.S. 511 (1949) — maintenance and cure ends at maximum cure; permanent disability does not create an indefinite obligation.
- Vaughan v. Atkinson, 369 U.S. 527 (1962) — earnings of a seaman who worked out of necessity while the employer wrongfully withheld maintenance were not offset; fact-specific and not a universal rule for every return to work.
- Vella v. Ford Motor Co., 421 U.S. 1 (1975) — entitlement continues until a medical determination of permanence; no retroactive cutoff.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- McCorpen v. Central Gulf Steamship Corp., 396 F.2d 547 (5th Cir. 1968) — pre-employment concealment defense; distinction between required medical disclosures and situations with no inquiry.
- Brown v. Parker Drilling Offshore Corp., 410 F.3d 166 (5th Cir. 2005) — three-element formulation: concealment or misrepresentation, materiality to hiring, and causal connection; subjective intent to deceive not required; a specific medical question rationally related to job duties generally establishes materiality, subject to the seaman proving the employer would have hired him even with disclosure.
Maintenance and cure is a matter of federal general maritime law. It is not a Louisiana workers' compensation benefit, and Louisiana workers' compensation rules do not govern it. Fifth Circuit decisions carry particular weight for seamen whose cases arise in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi federal courts, but formulations of these doctrines vary somewhat among circuits, and this page does not attempt to describe every variation.
Everything here is general information. It cannot resolve whether you, individually, are entitled to maintenance or cure after a work change or a medical-history challenge. That requires your records, your dates, and a lawyer's review of both against current authority. The parent maintenance and cure claim page provides the broader context this page assumes.
Ask The Young Firm to Review Your Work Change or Medical Eligibility Concern
If one of the five situations on this page describes yours, you do not have to decide on your own whether the employer is right. Call The Young Firm or send a brief message through the firm's contact page and ask for a review of the specific eligibility concern.
A useful first account is short: which situation applies (or more than one), the vessel and your job aboard it, approximate dates for when the condition appeared, when you reported it, when employment changed, and when treatment started, your current treatment status and whether any physician has said you are at maximum cure, and the reason the company or adjuster has given for questioning or stopping benefits — in its own words if you have it in writing.
Hold sensitive records — particularly psychiatric records — until you have asked how the firm prefers to receive them. An initial description does not require attaching your medical file.
The review's purpose is to identify the facts that are missing, evaluate whether the employer's stated reason is actually supported, and discuss what the realistic next steps are. It is not a promise of eligibility, of payment on any particular timeline, or of any recovery, and an initial inquiry does not by itself create an attorney-client relationship. And whatever the status of your claim, do not put off urgent medical care while you wait for legal guidance. Get the care you need first; the review can follow.