If you were injured at work in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, Chapter 152 of the General Laws guarantees you wage-replacement benefits and full medical coverage — without proving anyone was at fault. When the insurer denies, delays, or cuts off those benefits, Shea Culgin Law litigates the claim at the Department of Industrial Accidents. Call 617-674-0408 for a free consultation.
Fairhaven Works With Its Hands
Fairhaven’s employment base is unusually physical for a town its size. The waterfront supports shipyard and marine-repair work — hauling, welding, painting, and rigging vessels — along with marina operations and commercial fishing support businesses. The Acushnet Company, maker of Titleist golf products, runs manufacturing operations in town, with production-line, machine, and warehouse work. Add the Route 6 retail and restaurant corridor, construction trades, town and school employees, and healthcare workers commuting to the Southcoast Health system, and you have a workforce whose injuries are anything but theoretical: crush and fall injuries in yards and warehouses, lacerations and repetitive-stress damage on production lines, back and shoulder injuries from lifting, burns and eye injuries from welding and grinding, and slip-and-falls on wet docks and icy lots.
Chapter 152 covers all of it — including injuries caused by your own mistake — as long as the injury arose out of and in the course of employment.
A Note for Waterfront Workers
The line between state workers’ comp and federal maritime law runs right through Fairhaven’s harbor. Crew injured aboard vessels generally fall under federal remedies — the Jones Act, unseaworthiness, maintenance and cure — not Chapter 152. Shipyard and shoreside workers may fall under the federal Longshore Act or state comp depending on their work. Filing in the wrong system wastes time you don’t have, so sorting out jurisdiction is step one when a waterfront worker calls us.
What Chapter 152 Pays
- Temporary total disability (§34): 60% of your average weekly wage while you can’t work at all, up to 156 weeks, capped at the state maximum. Insurers routinely understate the average weekly wage by ignoring overtime, seasonal swings, and second jobs — we recalculate it in every file.
- Partial disability (§35): when you return at reduced hours or lighter duty for less pay, you receive a portion of the wage difference, up to 260 weeks.
- Permanent and total disability (§34A): lifetime weekly benefits at two-thirds of the average weekly wage, with cost-of-living adjustments, for workers who cannot return to gainful work.
- Disfigurement and loss of function (§36): one-time payments for permanent functional loss — a shoulder that won’t lift, a hand that won’t grip, hearing lost to machinery — and qualifying scars.
- Medical care: all reasonable, necessary, causally related treatment at no cost to you, plus mileage to appointments. You can treat at St. Luke’s, Hawthorn Medical, or wherever your doctors are.
- Lump-sum settlement: most contested cases ultimately resolve in a DIA-approved lump sum reflecting your benefit exposure, medical future, and earning prospects.
The DIA Process for Fairhaven Workers
Comp disputes aren’t decided in the New Bedford courts — they go to the Department of Industrial Accidents, which keeps a regional office in Fall River at 1 Father DeValles Boulevard, a short drive from Fairhaven. A contested claim moves from conciliation to a conference before an administrative judge, and if either side appeals the conference order, to a full hearing with an impartial medical examination. We manage the filings, the deadlines, and the medical evidence at every stage.
The deadline: four years from when you knew or should have known your condition was work-related. Acute injuries start the clock immediately; repetitive-trauma and gradual-onset conditions raise real questions about when knowledge attached — questions insurers turn against workers who waited. Report every injury to your employer in writing, immediately.
Denied, Delayed, or Terminated Benefits
The standard insurer playbook in shipyard and manufacturing claims: the condition is “degenerative, not work-related”; nobody witnessed the accident; the insurance company’s doctor says you’re fit for full duty; or a subcontractor arrangement leaves two insurers pointing at each other. None of those arguments ends a claim. Massachusetts compensates work aggravations of pre-existing conditions, unwitnessed injuries are proven through prompt reporting and consistent records, the DIA’s impartial physician — not the insurer’s examiner — anchors the medical evidence at hearing, and we identify the correct insurer when employers obscure it.
Third-Party Claims and Retaliation Protection
Workers’ comp never pays pain and suffering. But when someone other than your employer caused your injury — a negligent subcontractor at a job site, a defective machine or tool, a driver who hit you while you were working — §15 of Chapter 152 preserves a separate negligence lawsuit alongside your comp claim. Running both claims together, and negotiating the comp lien down at the end, is where representation pays for itself. Details on our workers’ compensation practice page.
And if your employer punished you for filing — termination, cut hours, demotion — §75B makes retaliation independently actionable.
Fairhaven Workers’ Compensation FAQ
I hurt my back lifting at a Fairhaven warehouse and my employer told me to use sick time. Is that right?
No. A work injury belongs in the comp system, not your sick bank. Your employer must report injuries causing five or more days of disability, and the insurer — not your PTO — owes wage replacement and medical coverage. Report it in writing and call us.
I do repair work at the shipyard. Am I under state comp or federal law?
It depends on your duties and where you perform them — shipyard workers are often covered by the federal Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act rather than Chapter 152, and vessel crew fall under the Jones Act. The systems pay differently. We’ll identify the right one before any deadline runs.
The insurer’s doctor examined me for ten minutes and cleared me for work. Do I have to go back?
Not necessarily. If the insurer moves to stop your checks based on that exam, we contest it at the DIA, where an impartial medical examiner’s opinion carries the weight at hearing — not the insurer’s hired examiner.
How long do I have to file a comp claim?
Four years from when you knew or reasonably should have known the injury or illness was tied to your job. Don’t use the cushion — late reporting is the single most common credibility attack insurers make.
Hurt on the job in Fairhaven? Call Shea Culgin Law at 617-674-0408. Free consultation, and in most successful contested claims the insurer pays the attorney’s fee.
