In California, if someone else was at least partially at fault for a car accident that you were involved in, you can receive compensation for lost wages.
The reason for this is because lost wages are included in the economic damages that may be recovered. Other examples include property damage, such as to your car, medical bills, which you may have incurred as a result of the injuries that you suffered, and non-economic damages, such as emotional distress.
It should also be stressed that this is the case even if you are partially at fault for the accident. For example, if you are judged to be 25% at fault for what happened, you are still eligible to receive economic damages, including lost wages, for up to 75% of the total amount. In fact, this percent rule even applies if the accident was almost entirely your fault.
Types of Eligible Lost Wages
There are lost wages in the form of an hourly wage or a salary while lost income related to commissions, bonuses and tips should be considered as well. Sick or vacation time that you had used in connection with the accident would also apply since those became no longer available to utilize for any illnesses, to take a vacation or to be reimbursed for later if they had instead gone unused.
You could include in a reimbursement claim information about income that you did not earn because you were being treated at a hospital or similar care facility, were recovering at home unable to work or had to take time off from your job for ongoing medical treatment, such as for physical therapy appointments.
Irregular Pay
There are a couple of main causes of irregular pay. One occurs when someone works an hourly wage but is assigned a wide variety of hours each week, such as 47 one week and 12 the next. Another is receiving performance bonuses in a manner that is difficult to predict.
Generally, the average rate of your income over the previous several months or, in some cases, years will help determine what was likely in the future had your accident not occurred. However, it is not always this simple. For example, if you were injured in a car accident in November and had to miss work for a couple of months and your employer assigns employees many more hours during the holiday season as compared to the rest of the year, that should also be taken into account.
Bonuses are sometimes more difficult to calculate, but many of those calculations can be done in a similar manner, through the taking of the average amount of bonuses that were received over the past several months or years and applying that to the time that you were gone. An example of a bonus that may need to be calculated differently would be if you were on pace to receive one for working 2,000 or more hours in a year or for performance-related reasons, but your accident caused that to no longer be possible. You might need to show that you were on pace for that bonus in order for this to be an eligible lost wage.
Another example of something to consider is if you were going to receive a raise, perhaps an annual percentage increase that kicks in on Jan. 1 of every year, that should be accounted for as well.
Proof of Income
You can provide proof of those lost wages in a number of ways. Showing pay stubs is a common one. If you were provided with documentation of future work schedules, including those with your case file could be essential. A doctor's note describing the direct connection between your car accident-caused injuries and your inability to work can help as well.
In some circumstances, requesting and receiving documentation from your employer describing what you would have likely earned during the time that you were out will be necessary to strengthen your case. This may be especially important to do if the aforementioned example of missing the busy holiday season applies to you, and you need to show that calculating a simple average would not be an accurate assessment of the hours that you would have worked had you been healthy then.
If you are self-employed, providing proof becomes somewhat more complicated and time-consuming, but that may not be all that difficult to do if you are already recording these types of details for tax and other reasons. Examples of relevant evidence in this type of situation can include invoices, payments received by clients, recent income tax returns and correspondence showing canceled assignments that you would have done if you had not been injured in that car accident.
Diminished Earning Capacity
Related to lost wages is your potential diminished earning capacity. For example, if you had a physically intensive job, such as in construction, but your car accident caused you to be injured to the degree that you can never work in that line of work again, you could be eligible for compensation for that reason. The relevant long-term calculation should be done as carefully as possible as you usually cannot ask for more money later if the awarded figure proved to be inaccurate.
Statute of Limitations
It is important to start this process as quickly as possible so that you meet the statute of limitations requirement. Usually, it is two years, but that exact timeline depends on various specifications of your case. In fact, it could even be shorter than that, such as if a government vehicle was involved in the accident; in that case, the statute of limitations is only six months
