He Took A Lighter Job To Save His Neck. The Judge Used His Own Paychecks Against Him

The TV lawyer on the billboard has never heard the phrase longshore wage earning capacity. He does not know it is the single number that decides how much money an injured longshore worker gets paid for the rest of his career. He does not know how the insurance company manipulates that number, because he has never been inside the federal system that calculates it. He signs cases, hands them to a secretary, and waits for a check. A real case decided by the Benefits Review Board shows you exactly how an injured longshoreman with a fused neck got told he lost nothing at all, and what it took to fight back.

In Ahuna v. SSA Pacific, Inc., a longshore mechanic hurt his neck on the job and had disc replacement surgery. He went back to his old mechanic work because that is what longshoremen do. The work kept getting harder on his neck. So he made the smart move. He switched to lighter duty winch work to protect what was left of his neck and prolong his career on the waterfront. The lighter work meant fewer hours and a lower skill rate. In plain English, he took a pay cut to keep working at all. Under the Longshore Act, that loss is supposed to be compensated as permanent partial disability.

Here is where it went sideways. The judge calculated his post injury earning power by averaging together everything he earned after the injury. That included the year he spent grinding through the heavy mechanic work that was wrecking his neck. When you average the high paying job he could no longer safely do with the lower paying job he moved to, the math says he earned more after the injury than before it. Benefits denied. The man with the surgically rebuilt neck and the smaller paychecks was told, on paper, that he had lost nothing.

The Longshore Wage Earning Capacity Trap Hiding In The Math

The Benefits Review Board caught the problem. The judge had it both ways. She accepted the parties’ own stipulation that the worker moved to the winch board because of his neck injury, then turned around and found his move was a voluntary lifestyle choice that had nothing to do with the injury, and averaged all his wages together accordingly. You cannot do both. The Board vacated the wage earning capacity finding and sent the case back to be done right.

Understand what was really happening in that courtroom. The employer’s entire defense was an accounting trick. Take the injured man’s strongest earning years after the injury, blend them with his diminished ones, and present the average as proof he was never hurt at all. The insurance company runs this play because it works on lawyers who do not know the Longshore Act. Longshore wage earning capacity is decided by what your body can actually sustain on the waterfront going forward, not by a blended average designed to bury your loss.

Why This Matters To Every Ingalls And Gulf Coast Waterfront Worker

If you work at Ingalls in Pascagoula, at the port, or anywhere on the Mississippi Gulf Coast waterfront, this case is about you. The day you move to lighter duty to protect an injured back, neck, or shoulder, the carrier’s accountants go to work on your wage history. They will slice it, average it, and present it however makes your loss disappear. The fight over longshore wage earning capacity is won by a lawyer who knows which wages count, which ones do not, and how to prove the job change was forced by the injury. The billboard lawyer does not know any of that. He has never read Section 8(h) of the Act. He will take whatever number the carrier puts in front of him and call it a win.

I am not going to lay out every move in the wage fight on a public blog where the carriers can read it. I put what injured waterfront workers need to know in my free book. If you got hurt on the docks or in the yard and you are looking at lighter duty and a smaller paycheck, read the book before you talk to anyone.

No pressure. No phone call required. Read it first.

If you were hurt working on the water or in a shipyard on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, you can read more about how I handle a Mississippi longshore case. Ingalls and port workers in Jackson County can also read about how I handle a Pascagoula longshore case specifically. The case discussed here is Ahuna v. SSA Pacific, Inc., BRB No. 22-0373, decided by the U.S. Department of Labor Benefits Review Board. This article is commentary on a published administrative decision and general information, not legal advice about your situation.