What types of damages can I recover under the Jones Act?
The Jones Act is very liberal for worker's injuries and what I mean is that there are certain absolutes. They must pay your medical bills; they must give you a certain daily rate for some of your living expenses.
You can get damages for your past wage loss, your future wage loss, your past medical expenses, your future medical expenses and for pain and suffering. Sometimes in unique cases you can get punitive damages and also, you can get attorney's fees if a company has willfully failed to pay for your maintenance incurred.
Now, if we are able to show that the Jones Act employers were at some point partially responsible or one of the other crew members contributed to you getting hurt, then you could essentially recover the full available damages, from middle anguish to pain and suffering. Many times if a guy is injured and he might be thirty years old and he can't go back to work offshore, we can recover full wages for the rest of his life minus what he could make onshore. So if someone is making $150,000 offshore and they get hurt and they can only make $50,000 onshore, well then we can recover the difference between those two until your retirement age. Therefore, the Jones Act is very favorable to those that are injured.
