Damages for Wage Loss in a Personal Injury Case
The law may grant you the right to sue and seek damages if you were hurt as a result of another’s negligence. The damages claim is likely to include “wage loss” damages if you are employed and are compelled to miss work as a result of the injuries you experienced.
When wage loss damages are available, they sometimes make up the majority of the overall damages claim. Therefore, to achieve complete and sufficient compensation, it is vital to argue for wage loss damages effectively.
Let’s look more closely.
Future and Past Wage Loss
There are two subcategories of wage loss: past and future.
The wage loss you—the plaintiff—have already experienced as a result of accident-related injuries is accounted for by past wage loss. Consider the scenario where one of your legs suffered serious fractures in an automobile accident. You had to take six months off as a construction worker before you could start working again. Your previous wage loss claim would cover the money you “would have” made over those six months if you had worked.
You’ll need to provide evidence that you were compelled to take the time off from work (such as medical records, testimony from a vocational expert outlining the demands of the position, etc.) as well as how much money you lost as a result to support your prior wage loss claim (i.e., pay stubs).
The wage loss you will experience in the future is taken into account. Let’s go back to the earlier illustration. Let’s say that because of how bad your injuries are, you will need to take three more months off to fully recover. You haven’t taken that time off yet, but you’re planning to.
You will be able to recover “damages” even though you haven’t yet experienced them by demonstrating that you will actually need to take the time off in the future as a result of your ailments.
Loss of Potential Future Earnings
For conflicts involving severe, career-altering injury, claiming loss of future earning capacity is a distinctive and potent strategy. Simply put, the loss of future earning capacity is intended to take into account changes in your potential earnings throughout the course of your career, as a catastrophic accident may have changed the course of your career.
In order to make this easier to understand, let’s take a small example.
Let’s say you suffer injuries in a slip-and-fall incident at a well-known retail location. You sustained severe back wounds. Now, you typically work as a nurse in a hospital. However, you are unable to stand up and move around for longer than 15 minutes at a time due to the back pains. For the remainder of your professional life, this restriction will be with you.
As a result, your professional path is changed in addition to having to miss time from work (resulting in lost wages in the past and future). Given your physical restrictions, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever be able to work as a nurse again. You won’t likely be able to “be on your feet” in most clinics and hospitals.
There may yet be some opportunities for you to change into a different healthcare career path. A desk job can be feasible, but it might also pay less (on average) and offer fewer prospects for advancement. You must compare the earning potential of your new, alternative career route with the earning potential of your old career path when claiming loss of future earning capability. The responsible defendant should and is able to make up that shortfall.
For A Free Consultation, get in touch with a personal injury attorney in our network.
If someone else’s carelessness, recklessness, or intentional wrongdoing resulted in an accident that injured you, you may be entitled to hefty damages, including lost wages. Wage loss claims can be unexpectedly difficult to handle; as a result, it’s crucial that you deal with a lawyer who knows how to handle this difficulty successfully.
We are happy to run a network of hundreds of skilled personal injury lawyers here at 11112222, many of whom have dealt with cases including intricate pay loss concerns.
For a free and confidential consultation with a qualified personal injury lawyer in your region, give us a call right away. Our team is available around-the-clock and can put you in touch with a lawyer in as little as 10 minutes.
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