If you suffer a serious injury, one place where you may want to seek compensation is in regard to your lost wages. For instance, perhaps you have an injury that keeps you out of work for a month. Not only do you need to cover those medical bills, but you may have lost thousands of dollars in wages over that month and your budget no longer works. So you may also be able to seek compensation for what you would have been paid if you hadn’t gotten hurt.
But there’s another area to consider, which is lost earning capacity. In some cases, this could be even more valuable than your immediate lost wages. What does it mean and how may it apply?
A reduction in earnings
Your earning capacity is essentially the amount of money that you will be able to earn in your life. If this is reduced, your total earnings are going to drop.
For example, say that you are a successful professor making $100,000 a year to teach high-level math to graduate students. You expect to earn a few million dollars over the course of that career, if you work for 20 or 30 years.
But then you get injured, suffering a traumatic brain injury that makes it impossible for you to teach these high-level mathematical concepts. You have to step away from your job as a professor. You may be able to get another job, but it may not pay you nearly as much money. You’re not entirely disabled, but if you can only work as a cashier making $30,000 a year, you likely feel that the injury ruined your career and is costing you about $70,000 annually.
As you can see, there are many financial issues that can come from a serious injury. Be sure you know how to seek compensation.