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Proving Loss of Wages for Injured People
Posted by: Larry Lapidus
August 13, 2008
Topic: Proving Loss of Wages for Injured People
Proving Loss of Wages for Injured People: In personal injury cases, a person earning wages may recover the value of his or her lost time from employment, regardless of whether they have been compensated by sick leave or annual leave or "paid time off" at their workplace to recover for their injuriesa and to undergo medical treatment and physical therapy. However, there must be an actual, verifiable financial loss , meaning that they would have otherwise have been able to use the sick leave or annual leave for a purpose other than medical treatments and recuperation for injuries caused by someone's negligence. Obviously, people who work for large organizations like the government or large corporations have an easier task in proving this than the self-employed. For the former, we provide a form which has all the information required. Our clients take this form to their personnel office for accounting of the value of the lost time and verification. For the self-employed, tax returns are the key documents required, unless there are regular profit and loss statements done by a CPA. Since tax returns are filed on an annual basis, the self-employed often have difficulty in proving the value of work loss of less than 30 days or so. And to make things even more complicated, the at-fault party or the insurance carrier for that party are only required to pay the net taxable income of the self-employed not the gross income earned.
Regardless of one's employment situation, my firm helps guide our clients through this sometimes confusing task of documenting the financial value of lost time from employment. In cases involving substantial loss of fringe benefits and /or the loss of wage earning capacity due to permanent injury, we often call upon an economist to assist in the analysis and if necessary, to testify in court to his findings. When assessing the value of this type of loss, I always consider that long-term absences can have a psychological impact as well as having a financial impact which can affect a person's overall quality of life. All of these points need to be discussed , analyzed and addressed as well in the context of evaluating a fair settlement value of any case.
