maintenance and cure encourages maritime commerce and assures the well-being of seamen). Over the years, the courts have broadened the duty to pay maintenance and cure. It is now well-settled that maintenance and cure is payable even though the shipowner is not at fault, and regardless of whether the seaman’s employment caused the injury or illness. Calmar S.S. Corp. v. Taylor, 303 U.S. 525, 527, 58 S.Ct. 651, 652, 82 L.Ed. 993 (1938). In Taylor, the Supreme Court established that the duty to pay maintenance and cure does not necessarily end with the voyage on which the seaman falls ill,, but can continue beyond that voyage. The Court wrote that. whether the seaman is at home or abroad, his right to maintenance and cure may outlast the voyage. The pol . 997, 1001, 8 L.Ed.2d 88 (1962) (<HOLDING>); and Vella v. Ford Motor Co., 421 U.S. 1, 4,
recognizing that a deckhands routine maintenance work on a tug constituted seaman duties for flsa purposes holding that under the eaja a litigant did not incur fees when his former employer agreed to pay his legal fees and expenses holding that an assault on a seaman by his former maritime employer aboard a vessel in navigable waters had the potential to disrupt maritime commerce because it ren dered the seaman unable to fish holding that denial of petition for modification of maintenance was proper when the parties agreement prohibited modification of maintenance holding 1 that a sick seaman who is forced to work because his former employer refuses to pay maintenance and cure is not required to set off his earnings against a maintenance and cure award and 2 that the seaman may recover attorneys fees as damages when the former employer unreasonably refuses to pay maintenance and cure