Personal Injury Insurance Settlements: Compensation for Lost Income...

All personal injury insurance settlements should include compensation for past and future lost income. On top of obvious special damages like medical bills, in a bodily injury claim there are usually damages suffered from loss of work income.

After an accident it's not always possible to immediately return to your job. Sometimes you're ordered to bedrest. Or perhaps you've broken a leg or arm, and working would be impossible.

This missed work costs you money. And since this lost income resulted from an accident caused by someone else, you're able to include it in your personal injury insurance settlement. For the most part, documenting lost work income is a simple procedure. Once you return to your job, request a letter confirming the work you missed from your Human Resources department.

The HR letter should state:

• how many days of work you missed; and
• what your wages would have been for those days

The total arrived at will be your claim for lost income.

That's easy enough. But what if your job already compensated you for the days you missed? A lot of people are lucky enough to get paid for sick days or to receive vacation pay.

In those cases it would appear no income was lost at all. But in fact this isn't true. Even though you're paid by your company, you still have the right to seek the same amount in your insurance settlement.

Why should you seek compensation for sick days?

Because the inflicted injury took away something you could have used at a later time. There are only so many sick days allowed. If the injury forced you to use seven of them, then you can't use them again. Those seven sick days were worth seven days of wages, and are therefore considered lost income.

This is even more apparent when it comes to vacation pay. No one wants to use their vacation days lying in bed injured. So even though you're paid for those days, the insurance settlement still has to compensate your wages.

The lost wages you're claiming will be added to the total claim after your other damages are figured. This means the lost income won't be worked into the damages formula we've already looked at.

If you determined that your pain and suffering damages are worth three times your other damages, lost wages aren't multiplied along with that number. Past and future lost income is added to the end total of personal injury insurance settlements.