Can You Recover Lost Wages After a Car Accident in Ohio?

A serious car accident usually affects far more than your health. If your injuries keep you from working, for instance, you lose wages, overtime, commissions, holiday pay, vacation days, leave and other benefits, or even the ability to earn the same income in the future. You pay not even be able to work again which would be terrible! 

Under Ohio law, if another person causes your crash and your injuries and if you were working at the time, you are entitled to recover 10)% of the income you lost. The key is being able to prove both that your inability to work was caused by the accident and the total amount of your financial loss.

What Are Lost Wages?

Lost wages are the earnings and employment-related compensation you would have received if the accident had not prevented you from working.

Depending on your circumstances, a lost-income claim can include:

• Regular wages or salary
• Overtime
• Commissions
• Bonuses that can be reasonably established
• Lost vacation or sick time
• Certain employment benefits
• Lost self-employment or business income
• Future lost earnings or diminished earning capacity

A basic question is: Where would you have been financially if the accident and your injuries had never happened?

We help you figure out that answer which can be complicated. 

What is Lost Wages vs. The Loss of Your Earning Capacity? 

There is a salient difference between what lost wages are and the loss of your earning capacity.

Lost wages generally involve income you have already lost. For example, if you normally earned $1,200 per week and your doctor kept you off work for eight (8)( weeks because of your injuries, your starting wage-loss calculation would be $9,600.

But Loss of earning capacity is a different calculation. The calculation depends on how an injury affected your ability to earn money in the future. A person may return to work, but still have a substantial claim if permanent injuries prevent them from doing the same job, working the same hours, advancing in their career, or earning what they otherwise would have earned. It is our job to figure out these losses for you. 

Future earning-loss claims are significant in cases involving permanent physical limitations, brain injuries, chronic pain, or other serious injuries. Yet, this is our expertise and experience. 

How Do You Prove Lost Wages?

An insurance company generally will not accept a lost-wage claim because you say you missed work. Such a  claim must be supported by credible evidence. Depending on the case, relevant  evidence may include but is not limited to:

• Pay stubs
• W-2 forms
• Tax returns for a number of years
• Employer wage verification
• Records showing missed work
• Overtime and commission histories
• Employment contracts
• Medical records
• Written work restrictions from your doctors
• Disability records
• Business records for self-employed individuals

Your medical evidence supporting lost income claims is crucial. There must be a connection between the accident-related injuries and the inability to perform your job.

What If You Are Self-Employed?

Lost-income claims are almost always  more complicated for business owners, professionals, independent contractors, and other self-employed people. And that is because a self-employed person’s income sometimes does fluctuate from month to month or year to year. Simply looking at a paycheck will not accurately measure the loss.

Tax returns for a number of years, profit-and-loss statements, invoices, contracts, appointment calendars, business records, historical earnings, and other financial evidence are usually necessary to show and prove what the person probably would have earned had the injury not have happened. 

In significant cases, we have to consider retaining an accountant, economist, vocational expert, or another qualified experts to prove such losses.

What About Future Lost Income?

Some injuries do not simply cause a person to miss a few weeks of work. They may change an entire career.

For example, let us say  a construction worker suffers a permanent back injury and can no longer perform heavy physical labor that the worker usually did. The financial consequences may continue for years. To that end, the  future earning-capacity claim will take into account factors such as:

• The person’s age
• Education and training
• Employment history
• Pre-injury earnings
• Career trajectory
• Physical and cognitive limitations
• Medical prognosis
• Ability to return to the same occupation
• Availability of alternative employment
• Expected future earnings and benefits

These cases require expert analysis because the goal is to determine the economic effect of the injury over time.

Do You Need an Expert Witness to Prove Lost Wages?

Sometimes we do and sometimes we do not. A straightforward claim involving a salaried employee who missed a definite period of work may be established through employment and medical records.

However, more complicated claims, such as those involving self-employed individuals, permanent disability, career changes, or substantial future losses, often require testimony from an economist, vocational rehabilitation expert, accountant, physician, or other qualified expert.

As a rule, the greater and more complicated the financial loss, the more important it becomes to carefully document and explain it with experts if need be.

Do You Have a Duty to Reduce Your Losses?

The answer is YES.  Ohio law requires an injured person to take reasonable steps to mitigate, or reduce, damages. That does not mean an injured person must or should ignore medical restrictions or return to work before it is medically appropriate. It means that a person should act reasonably under the circumstances. That is not easy to do for many people because they need the money from their job but at the same time they should not work and hurt themselves further as the other side will blame them for overdoing it. 

For example, if doctors permit a person to return to work with restrictions, an unreasonable refusal to consider appropriate work may easily become an issue in the claim.

We Look at More Than the Just the Paychecks You Did Not Get

A serious injury will have financial consequences that extend far beyond the days you were unable to report to work. At Kitrick, Lewis & Staley Co., L.P.A., we look at your  complete picture: what you earned before the collision, what you lost while recovering, whether you used vacation or sick time, whether your career has been affected, and whether your injuries will reduce what you can earn in the future.

For more than four (4) decades, we have represented thousands of injured Ohioans and we prepare our cases with the expectation that the evidence will be presented to a jury. Lost-income damages deserve the same careful preparation as every other part of an injury case. Proving these economic losses is most important for any Ohio claims. 

If you were injured in an Ohio car accident and the collision has affected your ability to work or earn income, contact Kitrick, Lewis & Staley Co., L.P.A. to discuss your case.