Calculating And Getting Compensated For Future Lost Wages

When you are in an accident that leads to you being out of work, you have an immediate loss of your income and wages. That loss is compensable, and you can certainly require a liable Defendant to pay you for the wages or salary that you lost as a result of being out of work after an accident.

But what about lost wages in the future? With certain types of injuries, and certain types of jobs, a lost wage claim isn’t just about the income you lost right now, after the accident, it’s about the income or wages that you may lose going forward in the future.

What Are Lost Wages?

These are called lost wages, and they are a general overall term, for a number of different situations.

For some people they will still be able to work in the future—but their career advancement may be limited. Because they won’t be able to do their job as well due to limitations from their injuries, their maximum earning potential is now lessened because of their injuries.

Some people will just have a shortened work life expectancy. If someone normally would have had, say, 30 years left of working years, they may now only have 15 or 20, because injuries can be expected to shorten their ability to work as late into life as they otherwise would have been expected to work.

Others can expect a full working career, but because of future medical needs—say, for example, an expectation that someone may need follow up surgeries, therapy or other medical procedures—they can expect to be out of work sporadically in the future.

Some of this may also depend on your career. A podcaster who does not work on a specific schedule or need to do anything physically strenuous, may not have the same future lost wage claim as a construction worker, even if they had the exact same injury.

Using Experts

Whatever the situation, you can put this information before a jury. In some cases, the information will have to be supported by experts in the field, who can testify as to what your career advancement would have been compared to what it is now, because of your injuries.

You may need experts to testify how long you may be out of work because of medical procedures, and experts to testify what an ordinary full working life would be, absent injury.

Definite Numbers and Calculations

A jury cannot just arbitrarily give you future lost wages, or estimate what wages would have been. It is insufficient to say “I’m injured, of course I won’t be able to work as much in the future.”

Rather, the jury must have some mathematical and calculable way to calculate lost wages. The expert may say that based on earning potential, if you cannot work the last 10 years of your working life, your salary would be $X, times those 10 years, and thus, your future lost wage claim is whatever it is.

Call the West Palm Beach personal injury attorneys at Pike & Lustig today for help getting compensated for wages you may have lost after an accident, now or in the future.

Sources:

calculator.academy/future-loss-of-earnings-calculator/#:~:text=Future%20Loss%20of%20Earnings%20Formula&text=To%20calculate%20the%20future%20loss,total%20number%20of%20days%20lost.

sapling.com/7990927/calculate-future-lost-earnings