If you’ve been seriously injured in a car crash or other event caused by someone else’s negligence or actions, you can and should include any lost income in the amount of compensation you seek for your financial losses. If you earn a regular salary or hourly wage, you can fairly easily provide proof of how much you lose while you’re off work recovering.
What if, like millions of Americans these days, you don’t have a regular income from one employer? Increasingly, people are working as independent contractors, freelancers and gig workers (like DoorDash delivery people and Uber drivers). They may work for multiple employers at once or take on projects with various employers. Even if you own your own business and pay yourself a salary, it may not represent the true economic value of the work you do for that business.
Experienced guidance is essential
Providing evidence of how much income you’re losing due to your injuries in any of those scenarios can seem like a challenge. Fortunately, it’s done all the time. However, you need to know what you’re doing. You need to be able to present an amount that is reasonable so that whoever is deciding your compensation will accept it. That likely will be the at-fault party’s insurance company. If you need to take the case to court, it will be a judge or jury.
This is just one reason why having experienced legal guidance is crucial to getting the compensation you need and deserve for your economic and non-economic damages after an injury has left you unable to work.
