If you’ve suffered injuries in a car crash that was the fault of another driver, you have the right to seek compensation for economic as well as economic damages. Economic damages are those that can be quantified in a dollar amount — like medical bills, car repairs and lost wages.
That last one can be important if you’re not able to work for a time due to your injuries. However, it’s not always so easy to specify. If you’re one of the many Americans who doesn’t work in a “traditional” job where you get a paycheck every two weeks, how do you provide evidence of how much you’re losing in wages?
What if you work independently?
What if you’re a student or semi-retired person who picks up handyman jobs via apps like Angi, Thumbtack and Handy? You can’t say for sure how many jobs you would have booked during the time you need to recover and how much you would have been paid.
Maybe you’re an independent contractor who takes project management, writing or website design jobs when something interesting comes along, but you also like to take time off to travel whenever you can. If you didn’t have a job booked when the crash occurred, how can you prove that you lost income?
These are just two examples of cases where providing evidence of lost wages will satisfy the at-fault driver’s insurance company (or a jury if it comes down to litigation to get compensation). It can be done. However, having experienced legal guidance should give you a much better chance of getting the compensation for lost wages and other losses and damages that you deserve.