Auto Injuries
Areas Served
Does your injury prevent you from working?
If you were injured in an accident, there can be a number of different ramifications. You likely sustained physical injuries that required medical treatment, property damage, emotional damage and even permanent disfigurement. One other area of compensation that you might be entitled to is “loss of earning capacity.” In the state of Nevada, this is a type of economic damage. This means that the loss is financially tangible rather than subjective. If your injuries prevent you from performing your job duties and render you unable to work, then you may be able to fight for compensation to recover your loss of future earnings. This is provided for in the Nevada Revised Statutes 41A.007.
Say, for example, you gross $50,000 per year and you are 45 years old. If, in your occupation, you would have worked until age 65 before retiring, you could potentially recover your lost earnings for those 20 years. It seems easy to conclude that an individual in this situation could be awarded $1 million in loss of earning capacity damages, but determining a total amount of damages is not always this simple. A Nevada personal injury attorney from Shook & Stone may be able to help you if you’ve been injured and can no longer work to earn an income.
Determining Loss of Future Earnings
When determining loss of earning capacity, the court must take into account what the plaintiff reasonably would have been able to earn had the injury not occurred. This can become complex, because it is impossible to look into the future and know what any given person could have recovered. A number of factors determine future earnings. Would the plaintiff have continued to work in that occupation until retirement? Would the plaintiff’s salary have remained the same? At what age could the plaintiff have retired?
Your Las Vegas personal injury lawyer must fight to prove the income that you would have made had you not been injured. To do this, we would need to gather information such as proof of wages, documentation regarding the potential for bonuses, promotions, raises and more. Our job is to quantify your loss of earning capacity losses.
Personal injury cases dealing with loss of earning capacity damages must focus on what could have been, not necessarily what would have been. If a person is permanently injured, they lose their potential to pursue other endeavors as well. Therefore, personal injury lawyers have the responsibility to fight for the loss of opportunity as well as the loss of ability to work. Simply put, a Nevada injury attorney from our firm would pursue whatever amount seems reasonable to compensate for the loss of earnings that both would and could have been.
Contacting a Nevada Personal Injury Lawyer
If you or someone you love was injured in an accident and you are unable to work, please do not hesitate to contact a Las Vegas injury attorney from our firm. At Shook & Stone, we are passionate about pursuing maximum financial compensation for our clients: for injuries, for emotional damages and for loss of future earnings. We aim to find every area in which our clients might be entitled to compensation and pursue it relentlessly. Since 1997, we have made it our goal to passionately advocate for the rights of victims.
If you are interested in representation from our firm, please do not hesitate to call us today and secure a free evaluation of your case.
