Pascagoula Longshore Permanent Disability Schedule

The TV lawyer running ads across the Gulf Coast has never explained the permanent disability schedule to an Ingalls worker or a Bollinger worker or anyone else who has spent years doing hard maritime labor in Jackson County. He has never sat across from a federal Administrative Law Judge and argued what a shoulder injury, a back injury, or a hearing loss from decades in Pascagoula’s shipyards is actually worth under 33 U.S.C. Section 908. Would you let the TV lawyer’s secretary argue your permanent disability case in federal court? She is in the building. She knows the file number. She has never been in that hearing room. That is what you get when you call the billboard number for your Pascagoula longshore permanent disability claim. I do things differently. Read this page before you call anyone.

What The Pascagoula Longshore Permanent Disability Schedule Means For Ingalls And Bollinger Workers

The Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act contains a permanent partial disability schedule at 33 U.S.C. Section 908(c). Every body part covered by the schedule has a specific number of weeks of compensation assigned to it by Congress. When a Pascagoula shipyard worker suffers a permanent impairment to a scheduled body part, the compensation is calculated as a percentage of that schedule value multiplied by two-thirds of the worker’s average weekly wage.

The schedule values are: arm, 312 weeks; leg, 288 weeks; hand, 244 weeks; foot, 205 weeks; eye, 160 weeks; thumb, 75 weeks; first finger, 46 weeks; great toe, 38 weeks; second finger, 30 weeks; third finger, 25 weeks; toe other than great toe, 16 weeks; fourth finger, 15 weeks. Hearing loss in both ears is 200 weeks. Hearing loss in one ear is 52 weeks.

For injuries not in the schedule, including the back injuries that are extraordinarily common among Ingalls welders, pipefitters, and shipfitters who spend careers in bent-over positions in tight hull spaces, the LHWCA provides for unscheduled permanent partial disability under Section 908(c)(21). That benefit is calculated based on actual wage-earning capacity loss rather than a fixed schedule value. The carrier fights both types hard. The fight looks different but the goal is identical: pay you as little as possible.

For a Pascagoula worker making $1,500 per week who suffers a permanent 30 percent arm impairment, the schedule produces roughly 94 weeks of compensation at $1,000 per week — $94,000.00 for a single body part. The carrier’s entire strategy is to get that impairment rating down to 20 percent or lower. That swing is worth $30,000 to $40,000 in your pocket versus theirs. That fight is what your lawyer is for. The TV lawyer has never had it.

How Ingalls And Bollinger Carriers Fight The Disability Rating In Pascagoula Cases

The carriers handling Ingalls Shipbuilding and Bollinger Shipyards claims have been processing LHWCA permanent disability cases in the New Orleans district for decades. They are not guessing. They have a list of independent medical examiners whose impairment ratings on carrier-retained cases consistently come in below the ratings assigned by treating physicians. They send your injured Ingalls worker to that examiner. The examiner uses the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment and makes every judgment call in the direction that benefits the carrier.

The AMA Guides contain ranges and options at every level of the rating process. A physician who has spent years producing ratings for insurance carriers does not produce the same number as a physician who treats injured workers and documents their limitations fully. The difference on the same injured worker is often 10 to 20 percentage points. On a scheduled body part at Ingalls or Bollinger wages, that is tens of thousands of dollars.

The battle over the disability rating is where these cases are won or lost. I know the carriers’ preferred examiners in the New Orleans district. I know their history on the stand. I know which questions expose the gap between their ratings on carrier cases and their published academic positions. The TV lawyer who has never been in that federal hearing room does not know any of this. He takes what the carrier’s examiner produces and tells you it is a fair offer. It is not. For the broader picture of how this system works across MS, see the Mississippi longshore permanent disability schedule page.

Unscheduled Back Injuries At Ingalls: The Wage-Earning Capacity Battle

Back injuries are not on the LHWCA schedule. They are compensated under Section 908(c)(21) based on wage-earning capacity loss. For an Ingalls pipefitter or a Bollinger rigger who has spent 20 years doing heavy physical work and can no longer do it, the carrier’s approach is to hire a vocational expert who identifies light-duty jobs in the national economy the worker theoretically could perform. Those jobs set the post-injury wage-earning capacity. The lower the wage those jobs pay, the smaller the weekly benefit.

The carrier’s vocational expert will find jobs. He always finds jobs. His job is to find them. Countering his testimony requires your own vocational expert, a medical record that documents the specific physical restrictions your back injury imposes with enough precision to hold up under cross-examination, and a lawyer who has stood in that federal hearing room and challenged this exact type of testimony before. I have done it. The TV lawyer has not and cannot tell you otherwise with a case name attached.

Hearing Loss At Ingalls: The Most Undercompensated Disability In Pascagoula

Ingalls Shipbuilding is one of the loudest industrial environments in MS. Grinding operations on steel hull sections, plasma cutting, pneumatic chipping, blasting, and welding in enclosed spaces without adequate noise controls produce daily exposure levels that destroy hearing over years of work. The LHWCA schedule assigns 200 weeks for bilateral hearing loss and 52 weeks for unilateral loss. For a worker earning $1,500 per week, bilateral hearing loss is worth $133,000.00 in scheduled compensation — before the carrier fights the audiometric evidence, the causation question, and the statute of limitations issue.

The statute of limitations on occupational hearing loss runs from the date the worker knew or reasonably should have known the loss was work-related. For most Ingalls workers that date is when an audiologist explained the pattern of noise-induced damage in their audiogram. Most Ingalls workers with significant noise-induced hearing loss never file a claim. They do not know it is compensable. They do not know the schedule assigns a specific dollar value to it. They do not know the clock is running. The carrier is not going to tell them.

If you have worked in the Ingalls yard for years and your hearing is not what it was, that loss may be compensable right now. Before you call anyone, do not give the adjuster a recorded statement. The Pascagoula longshore recorded statement warning page explains exactly why. Then get the free book below before you make any decision.

The Deadline The Carrier Hopes You Miss

The LHWCA has a two-year statute of limitations from the date of injury or the date you knew or reasonably should have known your injury was work-related. For traumatic injuries at Ingalls or Bollinger, the clock starts the day of the incident. For occupational conditions, it starts when you knew the connection. Two years sounds like time. It is not. Coworker witnesses leave the yard. Surveillance footage is overwritten. Medical records become difficult to reconstruct. The carrier’s file gets thicker every day while yours does not exist yet.

The Pascagoula longshore claim deadline page covers the timing rules in full. Read it before you decide you have more time than you do. For the complete statewide framework on permanent disability benefits, the Mississippi longshore permanent disability schedule page is the reference. And for the Pascagoula longshore lawyer who has actually tried these disability disputes in front of a federal Administrative Law Judge, the form below is where you start.

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