Can I Recover Lost Wages After an Accident Leaves Me Unable to Work?

If you’ve been injured by someone else’s negligence in an accident, you have the right to recover losses and damages, including your lost wages if you’ve been prevented from going to work as normal. An Augusta, GA personal injury lawyer can help you figure what wages you’ve lost accurately and make sure you get everything you are owed from the liable party.

To get compensation, you will need to properly calculate your lost wages and be able to show that your time away from work was caused directly by the injuries you sustained in the accident.

Calculating Your Wages

It takes experience and evidence to properly calculate what it last wages you were owed. If you’re only away from work for a day or two, the calculation can often be done simply by figuring how many hours you missed, but if it goes on much longer than that, you can have difficulties figuring out the precise amount. You’ll need to be able to show how many hours you typically worked in a week and that those hours were available to you during the time you were injured. Your lost wages include more than just the wages themselves, however. Your loss wages also include loss commission commissions, bonuses, and even lost opportunity for overtime and promotions. To claim for these, you will need to be able to provide concrete proof of what kind of things were available to you and how the accident affected your ability to access them. For example, if you’re claiming that you missed five hours of overtime each week that you were injured, you will need to be able to show that you typically took at least five hours of overtime on most weeks and that your employer would have offered you overtime had you been at work.

Proving the Link

The next important thing that has to be done is to prove definitively that the reason you were not at work and missed out on your wages and benefits was because of your injuries, and that these injuries were directly caused by the accident you suffered. You’ll also need to prove that the accident would not have happened but for the negligence of the other party in order to hold the other party responsible for your losses.Proving all this requires showing that the other party had a duty of care towards you, which they violated, and this violation caused the accident. In other words, but for the other party’s action or inaction, the accident would never have happened. Then you need clear medical proof that the injuries you suffered were sustained in that accident, plus you must prove that these injuries did indeed keep you from going to work.

Get Help From an Augusta, GA Personal Injury Lawyer

You can expect the insurance company to fight you at many points in an attempt to minimize their claims. Contact Davis, Chapman, & Wilder, LLC here in Augusta, GA today for experienced, determined representation to fight for your rights.

Tags: Personal Injury, Work Injury
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