When you’re injured in a car accident, your life can change in an instant. You’re going through your day or night, and all of a sudden, bang! Someone causes you to be severely injured in a car accident. It’s unexpected, but every facet of your life has been altered, at least for now. Your finances are immediately affected because you’ve been unable to return to work due to your injuries. And the effect of your injuries on your finances may not end there.
The St. Louis car accident lawyers of OnderLaw have decades of experience helping our clients pursue the compensation they deserve when someone else’s actions caused a crash that robbed them of their earning capacity. When you call us, you’ll get a free initial consultation where we can discuss your accident in detail. We’ll advise you about your legal options and help you decide what’s best to do next. You can call us or reach out to us online. Don’t go through this alone. We can help.
We often think about the physical injuries people suffer from after they’ve been in a car accident. But the effects of a person being injured in an accident can be far-reaching throughout every facet of their life.
Not only are you trying to recover from your injuries, but the medical bills are piling up. You haven’t been able to work, so you may not be bringing in any income, or you’re only bringing in a portion of the income that you were before the accident.
If you’ve been severely injured, even after recovering from your physical injuries, you may be unable to do the job that you were doing before your accident. You may not even be able to hold any type of employment at all, depending on whether your injuries left you with a disability. Even if you can work, you may have to take a job that earns you less than you made in your pre-accident job. This consequence of the injuries you suffered in the car accident is known as reduced earning capability, and you should and can be compensated for it.
You may receive compensation for your injuries and how they have impacted and changed your life. This compensation will come in the form of “damages.” Damages are intended to make you whole: to try to return you, monetarily, to how you were before the accident.
When you’ve become so severely injured that you can’t return to the job you had before your accident, can’t earn the same amount of income that you did before, or have become so disabled due to your injuries that you can’t ever work again, this reduction in or elimination of your income and future earning capability can be compensated through economic damages.
Economic damages are compensation for the tangible, calculable costs that resulted from the car accident. Included in economic damages are the medical costs associated with your injuries and reimbursement for the costs for any damage to your vehicle. Economic damages also include compensation for your past and the current accident-related loss of income, as well as compensation for future loss of income and/or earning capability.
To help you get compensation, we need accurately assess the value of your losses. To calculate a value for the loss of future income or diminished future earning capability, we can start by comparing the income you were earning before the accident to the income you’re earning now. If you’re still recovering from your severe injuries, you’re likely not earning any income as you’ve yet to return to work. If it’s already determined that, due to the long-term effects of your injuries, you’ll never be able to return to the same job you had and earn the same amount of income that you were earning, we’ll calculate the income you would be earning at the same job right now if not for your injuries.
If it’s determined that you’ll never be able to return to any job at all because your injuries have permanently disabled you, we’ll calculate what you could reasonably have earned based on your prior job and for how long you could have earned it. These calculations will allow us to arrive at a reasonable value for the loss of your future earning capacity and will inform the amount of compensation we will demand from the insurance company or at trial.
Our firm was founded almost two decades ago because our founding attorney, James Onder, wanted to help the people of Missouri and California hold the people who injured them accountable for their wrongdoing. Since its founding, and in the years during which our attorneys have built their experience, OnderLaw has fostered a reputation for fighting hard to help our clients get the compensation they deserve, whether it’s from individual people or multi-billion dollar corporations. Our firm has helped our clients secure three of the largest awards of damages the state of Missouri has ever seen. We’ve secured over $4 billion in total settlements and awards for our clients.
We prioritize the needs of our clients, and we understand that their main focus should be on healing from their injuries and trying to move forward with their lives.
Have you been severely injured in a car accident through no fault of your own? Have your income and future ability to earn income have been impacted? If so, you may be entitled to compensation.
The car accident attorneys at OnderLaw are experienced in helping our clients get compensation for the decrease in their earning capacity that resulted from their car accident injuries. When you’ve been injured by somebody else’s actions, and your financial future is negatively affected, the person who injured you should be held responsible.
Let us help you get the compensation you deserve in your St. Louis personal injury case. Call us today for a free consultation or complete our online contact form so one of our representatives can reach out to you as soon as possible.
