Lost Wages and Personal Injury Claims

When you’re in an accident, you can end up with several kinds of injury: physical, emotional, financial, etc.  Many of my clients want to make sure that they’re compensated not only for their medical expenses and pain and suffering, but also for their lost income.

That’s a reasonable goal.  After all, if the other side’s negligence caused you to miss work and therefore income, that’s foreseeable and they should be on the hook for it.

Of course, nothing is as easy as just asking for it.  There are a few issues that I encounter very often in having this discussion, so I thought I’d lay a few out here for public consumption:

• You exponentially increase your likelihood of recovering lost income when you can document your lost income. The best form of documentation is a letter from your employer stating BOTH how much time you missed AND how much that time was worth.  Remember, get them to write BOTH THINGS!
• If you have to use vacation or sick leave, that is a valid loss as well, so even if you technically get paid for missing work, you still lost the leave time, so you should be compensated for its value.
• Being self-employed is awesome in many ways.  It is generally not awesome when you’re trying to document your lost income.  These are very idiosyncratic, so talk to your attorney about how best to work with your situation.
• If you’re not paying taxes accurately, consider letting your lost wage claim go.
• Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.  If you missed one 3 hour shift of your $8/hour side job, let’s maybe not spend hours trying to chase down documentation for it.  Let it go.

There ya go.  I hope this helps you understand lost wage claims a little better.  Remember to call me if you have an injury claim. 919-929-2992.