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If you or a loved one sustain an injury caused by the negligent or intentional actions of another individual, company, or entity, you will likely be able to recover various types of compensation. If an injury victim is successful with their case, they can generally count on receiving coverage of their medical bills, pain and suffering losses, and even their lost wages. However, proving lost wages can be challenging. Here, we want to discuss how lost income is proven in a personal injury case. This includes current lost income as well as possible future lost wages.
If you have been injured due to the actions of someone else, there is a good chance that you will need some time away from work to ensure that you can make a full recovery. Depending on the severity of the injury, you may have to spend time in the hospital or at home recovering. It is not uncommon for doctors to order a person to limit their mobility while they heal from their injuries.
Unfortunately, a person could lose the income that they need to care for themselves with their families while they are recovering. It is crucial to fold lost income claims into a personal injury case. In fact, aside from medical expenses, lost wages are often the most substantial losses that a person experiences when they are injured.
Proving lost income will involve gathering up various types of evidence. This can include:
The evidence of lost wages will also be combined with all of the other types of evidence that have then gathered to determine liability for the injury claim and show the total losses the victim has sustained.
Lost current wages are not the only thing that many injury victims have to worry about. In some cases, an injury is so severe that it can keep a person from returning to the same job that they worked before they were injured. When this occurs, an injury victim may be forced to take a job that pays less than their previous job. In these cases, it may be necessary for the injury victim and their attorney to ask for compensation for lost earning capacity.
If a person is so severely injured that they are unable to return to work, this can keep them from earning an income at all. When this occurs, their injury claim will need to include lost future earnings.
Regardless of whether a person is looking to receive compensation for lost earning capacity or lost future wages, it may be necessary to work with a skilled economic and financial expert to help calculate their total expected future losses. In a sense, this is trying to predict the future. Some of the factors that will be used to determine these damages include:
When an injury is so severe that it affects a person’s future wages, it is crucial to work with an experienced personal injury attorney who can bring in the appropriate experts to make these calculations.