Pascagoula Longshore Recorded Statement Warning

The TV lawyer on the billboard will tell you to cooperate with the insurance adjuster. He will tell you the recorded statement is just routine paperwork. He will tell you it speeds up your claim. What he will not tell you is that he has never tried a longshore case in front of a federal Administrative Law Judge, which means he has never watched a recorded statement get used to destroy a worker’s claim at hearing. I have. And when you understand what the adjuster is actually doing when he calls you for that statement, you will never give one without a lawyer present.

What The Adjuster Is Actually Doing When He Calls You

The insurance carrier handling your Pascagoula longshore claim assigned an adjuster to your file the day you reported the injury. That adjuster has processed hundreds of LHWCA claims. He knows the federal system cold. He knows which questions produce answers that help the carrier and which ones produce answers that help you. Every question in that recorded statement is designed to produce answers that help the carrier.

The adjuster will call you early. Before you have had time to think clearly about what happened. Before you have spoken to a lawyer. Before you understand your rights under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act. The timing is not accidental. The carrier wants your statement before you know what you are saying.

He will introduce himself as friendly and professional. He will tell you this is standard procedure. He will say the statement helps document your claim and gets the process moving. He may suggest that not cooperating will delay your benefits. Every word of that framing is designed to lower your guard. The statement does not help your claim. It creates a record the carrier will use against you.

Under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, you are not required to give a recorded statement to the insurance carrier before you have legal representation. Full stop. The adjuster will not volunteer that information. The TV lawyer who has never been in a federal longshore hearing does not know enough to protect that right. A Pascagoula longshore lawyer who has taken these cases to hearing knows exactly what that statement costs you if you give it without preparation.

The Four Things The Adjuster Is Fishing For In A Pascagoula Longshore Recorded Statement

The first is a prior injury admission. The adjuster will ask about your medical history in a way that sounds routine. Have you ever had back pain before. Have you ever been treated for shoulder problems. Have you ever missed work due to a physical condition. Every yes is a data point the carrier will use to build the pre-existing condition defense. The legal standard under the LHWCA is not that your work caused your condition from scratch. But the carrier will use any prior history to argue that your work did not cause anything new. Your answer in that statement becomes their opening argument at hearing.

The second is an inconsistency on how the injury happened. You were hurt at work. You know what happened. But the adjuster will ask you to describe the incident in detail, multiple times, from multiple angles, while you are injured and stressed and not thinking about how your words will read in a federal hearing transcript two years later. Any variation between your recorded statement and your later testimony gives the carrier’s defense counsel material for cross-examination. A small difference in how you described the height of a platform or the weight of a load becomes a credibility attack at hearing.

The third is a minimization of the injury. You are in pain. The adjuster will ask you to rate your pain, describe what you can and cannot do, and characterize the severity of your condition. Injured workers, especially those who are physically tough and not used to complaining, tend to understate their symptoms. That understatement goes into the record. Months later, when your treating physician documents serious permanent impairment, the carrier will pull out your statement from day three and ask why you said it was not that bad.

The fourth is an early return to duty admission. The adjuster will probe for any statement suggesting you expect to recover fully, that you might be able to do light duty, that you are not sure how serious the injury is yet. That information feeds directly into the carrier’s strategy of getting you back to work as quickly as possible and minimizing the wage replacement period.

What To Say When The Adjuster Calls About Your Pascagoula Longshore Recorded Statement

Three sentences. You were injured at work. You are represented by a lawyer. Your lawyer will be in touch. Then end the call.

If you do not yet have a lawyer, the answer is still short. You are not prepared to give a recorded statement at this time. You will contact the adjuster after you have spoken with legal counsel. Then end the call.

The adjuster may push. He may suggest your benefits will be delayed. He may say the statement is required. It is not required before you have representation. Under the LHWCA, the carrier has specific obligations to begin paying benefits. Delaying benefits as leverage to get an unrepresented statement is a tactic, not a legal requirement. You do not have to accept that framing.

Do not explain why you are declining. Do not apologize. Do not get into a discussion about what you will or will not say. Every word you say in that conversation, even without the recorder running, can be used. Short, direct, and done.

How A Recorded Statement Gets Used In A Federal Longshore Hearing

The Administrative Law Judges who hear Pascagoula longshore cases in the Covington, Louisiana district office have seen this pattern hundreds of times. The carrier’s defense counsel puts the recorded statement into evidence. Then they put the claimant on the stand. Then they read from the statement and ask whether that is what the claimant said. Yes. And now your treating physician says your impairment is thirty percent. But in your statement three days after the injury you said you hoped to be back to normal. Do those two things match?

That is not a hypothetical. That is how recorded statements get used in federal LHWCA hearings by experienced defense counsel representing insurance carriers who have been doing this at Ingalls and other Pascagoula employers for decades. The TV lawyer who has never been in that room does not understand what he is giving away when he tells you to just cooperate with the adjuster. I understand it because I have been in that room.

The same recorded statement risk applies to every covered worker along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Whether you work at the Pascagoula waterfront, in the Ingalls shipyard production areas, or at any other LHWCA-covered facility, the carrier’s adjuster operates the same way. For the full picture of how the LHWCA system works and what your rights are from the moment of injury, see the Mississippi longshore lawyer page.

Before you call anyone about your longshore claim, get the free book at the bottom of this page. It covers exactly what the carrier is doing to your claim right now and what other mistakes will permanently damage your case before you ever hire a lawyer.

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