Recovering Lost Wages in Injury Claims
Everyone knows that they want to get their medical bills paid for after an auto accident or after sustaining some other injury that wasn’t their fault.
Almost as many people know that they might deserve something for “pain and suffering.”
Others might realize that they may have a right to recover lost wages from the at-fault party. But remember that as always, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff, so you, as the victim, have to prove your lost wages. So how do you do that?
The first step is justifying your absence from work. Do you have a doctor’s note for the time period? That’s best. The law doesn’t require one exactly but if you’re arguing to a jury, it would be helpful to show that you missing work was due to more than you just not feeling like going. Don’t get me wrong, not feeling like going can be a legitimate reason; who would feel like going to work after breaking a leg? Why would you need a note? But in these situations, more is better, so if you can get a doctor’s note, that’s best.
Next we have to show what that loss was exactly. Most of the time I ask clients to have their employers provide a note indicating BOTH a) how much time was lost, AND b) what that time was worth.
**If any HR folks or Managers or Bosses are reading this, please, for the love of all things holy, provide lost wage letters with BOTH of those bits of info. Having one without the other is absolutely #$%^&*&^%$%^ useless to your employee. Please.**
For example, if you missed 10 hours and make $10/hour, you’ll want the letter to state those two things. Anyone can do the math once those variables are provided, so it doesn’t have to complete the equation. But it darn well better have BOTH of those variables.
Short of that documentation, you can still get lost wages. If you provide tax info, pay stubs, and a doctor’s note (or maybe no note in the case of short time periods) then we still might be able to extrapolate the value of the loss. But once again, more is better, so don’t count on this method if you don’t have to.
What if you didn’t actually lose money, but spent vacation, sick leave, etc.? Well, that’s still a loss, so you should still be able to recover the value. You’ll still need some documentation, but the fact that you had sick leave shouldn’t be a bar to recovery.
When you’re self-employed this whole process is more difficult because there is no independent third party to provide documentation. You might be able to do the tax/pay stub method, but sometimes this doesn’t work quite as well for the self-employed. Impossible? No. But this complicates things a bit and may need some expert assistance.
Sometimes insurance companies will automatically deduct about 1/3 of the lost wage number on the premise that you would have paid taxes on that money if you’d gotten it, so they don’t have to pay you any more than you would net. I am of the position that this is erroneous, but it becomes a cost/benefit analysis as to whether it is worth fighting or not.
There ya go. Now you know how to document your lost wage claim. If you’ve been hurt badly enough to miss work, you might be better served to hire an attorney to help you. I know a good one! 919-929-2992.