When we act on your behalf in pursuing a personal injury claim, we aim to recover General Damages (damages for your injury and suffering) and Special Damages (any loss that you have incurred due to the accident). Special Damages can be wide ranging from claiming travel expenses, medical expenses to claiming for damaged clothing, care and assistance, lost earnings etc. In this blog I will attempt to explain how we go about recovering lost earnings after an accident.
We can try and recover lost earnings if you have been injured in an accident and as a result you were not able to work and you lost earnings as a result. We can even claim for loss of overtime pay if we can prove that you worked overtime before the accident but were not able to after the accident. As I say, Special Damages are wide ranging. The most important aspect of any Special Damages claim is providing documentary proof/evidence that the loss actually occurred.
In terms of lost earnings we would ask you to send in pay slips for a number of months prior to the accident. We would also request pay slips for the period following the accident (if applicable). If you have sustained a loss of earnings then the pay slips should show this. Perhaps you can only work reduced hours after the accident, your earnings would be down and we can seek to recover the difference. If your wage is not set (i.e. you receive a different amount of pay each week or month) then we can calculate your average pay for say the 6 month period before the accident. We can use the average pay figure to calculate your loss after the accident.
The Defendant (or more commonly their insurers) are likely to dispute any claim for loss of earnings unless you can prove that a loss has occurred. We would need copies of wage slips, bank statements etc. In terms of claiming Special Damages we prepare something called a Schedule of Loss or Schedule of Special Damages. This is basically a document setting out any losses or expenses that you are claiming in relation to the accident. Attached to the schedule we would provide documents proving the losses (copies of wage slips etc). Once you agree with the contents of the Schedule of Loss then we could look to disclose it to the Defendant.
One point to note when talking about Special Damages is the duty upon you as the Claimant. This duty is to do something called “mitigate your losses”. This basically means that you must keep your losses to a minimum. As soon as you are fit and able then you should look to return to work. If you take a longer period off work and this is deemed unreasonable by a medical expert then any loss of earnings may not be recoverable.
