Do you get a higher settlement in a Jones Act case if you have a higher impairment rating? Does your impairment rating increase your settlement value?

Does an impairment rating in a Jones Act case make any difference to the injured worker? If you have an impairment rating assigned to you after a maritime injury does that mean that your company owes you a certain amount of a settlement. No.

Under a maritime case your impairment rating itself is not very significant. The impairment rating is usually that number that the doctor assigns to your injury. Typically if you have a back injury it may be a 10 percent or a 15 percent impairment rating. An impairment rating is meant from a doctor to be the percentage of injury that you have to that part of your body. A lot of times doctors will assign a whole body impairment rating to you which is generally a much lower number than the number assigned to the part of your body. But the question of does the impairment rating mean that you get a higher settlement in a maritime case or Jones Act case the answer to that is no.

In a maritime case and in a Jones Act case what is critical is whether or not you can go back to the same type of work you used to do. And let me explain this a little bit more. A lot of times people will have an impairment rating to their lower back of 5 percent or 10 percent but the doctor may actually release them to very heavy manual labor. This means that that person can actually go back to an oil rig or a vessel and make the same amount of money he used to make. So in that situation an impairment rating is not significant at all. It does not mean that your company owes you a certain amount of money. By the same token a lot of times a person may have a very low impairment rating of 3 or 4 or 5 percent to the whole body but because of the type of injury it is to a foot or to a hand or to a knee the doctor actually recommends that you do not go back to heavy duty work on an oil rig or on a vessel. In situations like that you may have a very significant case because you're going to lose a lot of future wages. The impairment rating that you're given after your maritime injury accident does not necessarily determine the value of your case.

Call us if you have any questions about the treatment you've received, any type of an impairment rating you may have or how that may affect your maritime or Jones Act case.