Jones Act Compensation Calculator

Maintenance & Cure is an unconditional daily living-expense payment owed during recovery regardless of fault, calculated here as Maintenance Rate ($/day) times Days Unable to Work. Unearned Wages is a separate entitlement to the seaman's full pay through the voyage or contract period, approximated by converting Pre-Injury Weekly Wage to a daily rate and multiplying by the same days-out figure — the two are paid on top of each other, not instead of one another.

The calculator uses a fixed, simplified assumption of 20 remaining working years for every case, multiplying that by your annualized pre-injury wage and the Permanent Impairment (%) rating. A real case would instead rely on the seaman's actual age, occupation, and life-expectancy/work-life tables, so this figure is only a rough proxy — it only applies at all when Permanent Impairment (%) is above zero.

Economic Damages sums Unearned Wages, Medical Expenses, and Future Earning Loss. The calculator then brackets a pain-and-suffering range at 1x (low) to 3x (high) of that economic damages figure — a commonly cited multiplier convention, not a fixed legal formula — and adds Maintenance & Cure on top of each end to get Est. Total Low and Est. Total High.

No — that's the defining feature of maintenance and cure under the Jones Act: it's owed unconditionally during recovery regardless of whether the seaman, the vessel owner, or no one in particular was at fault. This calculator computes it purely from Maintenance Rate ($/day) and Days Unable to Work, with no fault-based adjustment.

Very — Jones Act claims carry a strict three-year statute of limitations from the date of injury, and the figures this calculator produces are planning estimates, not settlement values, since actual recoveries also depend on comparative fault, unseaworthiness claims, and case-specific settlement or jury dynamics. A seaman injured aboard a vessel should consult a maritime attorney promptly rather than relying on this estimate alone.