When you sue for compensation after an accident, you can usually be awarded lost wages if you had to recover from injuries and missed work as a result. What happens if your injuries will continue to affect your ability to work though? In cases like these, you can ask that your compensation be calculated with lost future wages in mind. This can be tougher to pull off, but an experienced Snohomish County construction accident lawyer can help you fight for a fair compensation offer.
How Can Lost Future Wages Be Calculated?
It can be easy to add up lost wages when you have a steady paycheck. If you make X amount of money per week and you missed Y number of weeks, then just multiply X times Y to get your answer. When you calculate lost future wages, the math can be more complicated. Considerations can include:
The retirement age: Did an accident victim have many years of working ahead of them, or were they just a few years from retirement? This can affect how much compensation a worker receives.
Room for wage growth: It may be possible to argue that you had a lot of room for growth in this industry. If not for your injuries, you could have continued in your current job, notching promotion after promotion and raise after raise. The accident took that from you.
How much you can work: Sometimes a victim’s injuries prevent them from working at all. Sometimes they have to switch from a full-time job to a part-time job, or go into a less lucrative field that causes less stress on their injuries. How someone’s ability to earn a living has been affected should be considered when lost future wages are calculated.
How Can a Lawyer Help Me?
Your lawyer can advocate for you and try to calculate fair compensation. They can also connect you with expert witnesses who can testify on your behalf and strengthen your case. A doctor can speak with authority about your injuries and how they would affect your ability to work in the future. An economic expert can show what kind of financial impact your injuries have had on you and how this accident will continue to have ramifications for your household for years to come.
Proving the negligence of someone else and calculating fair compensation is tough on your own. Let one of our experienced attorneys help you fight to make things right.
Schedule Your Consultation
If you were hurt in an accident and your injuries could make it harder for you to earn a living, that needs to be addressed. Contact Amy C Brown Law, PLLC and schedule a consultation today. We can tell you more about how our lawyers can help you secure a fair compensation offer that can make a big difference in the lives of you and your family.