Mississippi Longshore Permanent Disability Schedule

The TV lawyer running ads across MS has never explained the permanent disability schedule to a single longshore worker. He has never sat across from a federal Administrative Law Judge and argued what a shoulder injury, a back injury, or a hearing loss at a Gulf Coast shipyard is actually worth under 33 U.S.C. Section 908. He does not know the schedule. He does not know how the impairment rating process works in the federal LHWCA system. And when the insurance carrier sends your injured worker a settlement figure based on a minimized disability rating, the TV lawyer accepts it because he has no idea what the schedule says your injury is actually worth. I do. And so will you after you read this page.

What The Mississippi Longshore Permanent Disability Schedule Actually Is

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

The schedule values as set by the Act 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 compensated at 200 weeks. Hearing loss in one ear is 52 weeks.

For injuries not specifically listed in the schedule, including back injuries, the LHWCA provides for unscheduled permanent partial disability under Section 908(c)(21), which compensates based on the actual wage-earning capacity loss the injury produces rather than a fixed schedule value.

These are not small numbers. A MS Gulf Coast shipyard worker earning strong wages who suffers a permanent 30 percent impairment to the arm is entitled to roughly 94 weeks of compensation at two-thirds of his average weekly wage. For a worker making $1,500 per week, that is $1,000 per week for 94 weeks, or $94,000.00 in permanent disability compensation for a single body part. The carrier’s strategy is to get that impairment rating as low as possible. The difference between a 20 percent rating and a 30 percent rating is tens of thousands of dollars.

How The Carrier Fights The Disability Rating

Every serious permanent disability claim under the MS longshore permanent disability schedule eventually becomes a battle of medical experts. The carrier retains an independent medical examiner whose impairment ratings consistently come in below the ratings assigned by treating physicians. That examiner will review your medical records, conduct a physical examination, and produce a report assigning a disability rating that minimizes what the carrier has to pay.

The examiner will use the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, the standard methodology for rating permanent impairment in LHWCA cases. But the Guides contain ranges, options, and judgment calls at every level. A physician who consistently works for carriers consistently makes those judgment calls in the direction that minimizes the rating. A physician who treats injured workers consistently documents the full extent of impairment. The difference between those two physicians, applied to the same injured worker, is often 10 to 20 percentage points of impairment. On a scheduled body part at shipyard wages, that difference is worth tens of thousands of dollars.

The battle over the disability rating is where longshore cases are won or lost. The TV lawyer who has never been in a federal LHWCA hearing does not know how to fight it. He does not know the carriers’ preferred experts. He does not know their history on the stand. He does not know which questions expose the inconsistency between their ratings on carrier-retained cases versus their published academic work. I know all of that. I have cross-examined these experts. The TV lawyer never has.

Unscheduled Injuries And The Wage-Earning Capacity Calculation

Back injuries and other conditions not specifically listed in the Section 908(c) schedule are compensated under the unscheduled permanent partial disability provision. The benefit is calculated based on the difference between the worker’s pre-injury average weekly wage and his post-injury wage-earning capacity. That calculation is not straightforward. The carrier will argue that despite the back injury, the worker retains the capacity to earn wages in some category of lighter work, which reduces the benefit.

A vocational expert who testifies for the carrier will identify hypothetical jobs in the national economy that the worker could perform given his physical limitations. Those jobs set the post-injury wage-earning capacity. The lower the identified wages, the lower the weekly benefit. The higher the identified wages, the more the carrier claims the worker can still earn and the less they have to pay.

Countering this requires your own vocational expert, a medical record that clearly documents the physical limitations the injury imposes, and a lawyer who knows how to present that evidence and cross-examine the carrier’s vocational expert at hearing. The TV lawyer has never done any of this. For a MS longshore lawyer who has, the wage-earning capacity fight is familiar ground.

Hearing Loss: The Most Undercompensated Longshore Disability In Mississippi

Gulf Coast shipyards are among the loudest industrial environments in MS. Grinding, welding, blasting, and the operation of heavy equipment in enclosed shipyard spaces produces noise levels that exceed safe exposure limits daily. Workers who spend years in that environment develop noise-induced hearing loss that is permanent and progressive. Hearing loss is a scheduled condition worth 200 weeks for both ears under the Act, but it is also one of the claims most commonly buried inside a larger cumulative trauma picture — a welder who develops both spinal damage and hearing loss has two separate compensable conditions running simultaneously.

Under the LHWCA, occupational hearing loss is a compensable condition. The schedule assigns 200 weeks for bilateral hearing loss and 52 weeks for unilateral hearing loss. The date of injury for statute of limitations purposes runs from the date the worker knew or should have known the hearing loss was work-related. For many MS shipyard workers, that date is when an audiologist told them their hearing loss pattern was consistent with noise-induced damage.

Most MS shipyard workers with significant noise-induced hearing loss never file a claim. They assume it is just part of working in a shipyard. They do not know it is compensable. They do not know there is a schedule value. They do not know the statute of limitations is running from the date they first knew. That ignorance costs them tens of thousands of dollars in benefits they earned by showing up to work in a loud shipyard for decades.

Before you call anyone about your permanent disability claim, be aware the adjuster will push for a recorded statement immediately — do not give one. Get the free book at the bottom of this page first.

City-Specific Longshore Disability Resources

The federal disability schedule is the same law regardless of which MS port city your employer operates in. But the employers, the specific injury patterns, and the carriers handling claims differ by city. If you worked at a specific facility, the city-level pages below go deeper on the permanent disability fight as it plays out at your employer.

• Pascagoula Longshore Permanent Disability Schedule

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