How Are My Lost Wages Calculated if I Am Injured as a Result of Someone Else’s Negligence in Florida?
If you are employed as a carpenter, you are injured in a car accident caused by someone else’s negligence, and your ability to use one of your hands is badly impaired as a result of that injury, then you are right to be worried about what effect that person’s negligence may have on your ability to work, earn a living and support your family in the future, given your injuries. Thankfully, Florida law permits you to recover for any lost wages in the past and any lost future earning capacity that you will lose because of the injuries you suffered due to someone else’s negligence on your ability to work. This allows you, as a victim of someone else’s negligence, some small measure of comfort that your ability to provide for your family will not be cruelly taken away from you due simply to someone else’s carelessness in causing any otherwise unavoidable car accident.
Although Florida law protects your ability to recover these damages from the person whose negligence caused you these losses, quantifying the amount of past lost wages or lost future earning capacity that you will miss out on can be difficult. It takes an experienced economist or other expert witness and an experienced personal injury attorney to build the best possible case for you in terms that a jury can understand. At Schwed, Adams & McGinley, our personal injury attorneys know how to take what are often very difficult concepts and calculations and break them down into terms and conclusions that a jury can easily grasp with the help of our excellent expert witness economists to help our clients recover maximum compensation for their personal injury claims.
What Are Lost Wages? What Is Included in the Calculation of Lost Wages in My Personal Injury Case in Florida?
Lost wages includes the past, present and future earnings that you miss out on as a result of your injuries caused by someone else’s negligence. Whether it is a motor vehicle accident, a slip and fall, a dog bite, or some other personal injury scenario, an issue that cuts across every single Florida personal injury case is that of lost wages and future earning capacity. These are legal terms that describe the attempt to make an accident or other negligence victim whole for whatever losses you suffered to your ability to earn an income. This is often a significant amount of money and a large portion of your losses depending on how badly and in what way you were injured due to someone else’s negligence.
Past wages are often the most simple to calculate, because you can simply look at the amount of time that you missed from work as a result of your injuries and multiply that by whatever you would have made and then you have an amount. The same is true for any present wage losses that you have; if you are working, but you can only work part-time now or you have to work in a lower paid position due to your injuries and the diminished capabilities they have left you with, then the calculation would be made by taking whatever you would have made absent the accident and then calculating the difference between that and what you are currently making.
Expert testimony is usually required when calculated lost future earning capacity because few cases are so clear-cut as the example above. After all, a carpenter who cannot use one of his hands entirely or has very limited use of a hand often does not require expert testimony to establish that it will be difficult, if not impossible, for him to work in the future. Instead, expert testimony would be needed to quantify the amount of that loss, to take it and turn it into a whole number that can be presented to a jury in plain English and easy, simple to understand math when it comes to trial. This is not as difficult as it sounds, particularly when an experienced personal injury attorney is involved.
Contact Schwed Adams & McGinley
At Schwed, Adams & McGinley, our experienced personal injury attorneys have more than 150 years of representing the victims of all sorts of personal injury scenarios in Florida. We will fight for you to recover every cent of lost wages and the other damages that you are entitled to under Florida law. We also are not afraid to take on cases that may feature unique lost wage or lost future earning capacity claims because we have had the good fortune to develop relationships with a number of excellent expert witnesses who can assist us in helping a jury to understand exactly what our client’s losses were as a result of his or her injuries caused by someone else’s negligence and how the number was generated. Unlike many attorneys, who may have gone to law school because they hated math, our attorneys also are comfortable working with numbers and walking our trusted experts through these types of complex calculations. Therefore, if you, a family member, or a loved one have been injured as a result of someone else’s negligence, contact the experienced personal injury attorneys at Schwed, Adams & McGinley, P.A today at 877-694-6079 or contact@schwedlawfirm.com for a free consultation.