Whilst people can still work with a whiplash injury, many will either voluntarily reduce their hours or stay off work completely depending on the severity of their injury. By working less, they obviously lose out financially.
But don’t worry because we can account for this when helping you with a whiplash claim, even accounting for lost overtime hours as a result of the accident or injury.
There are normally two parts to a claim which are General Damages for the pain and/or suffering and Special Damages for losses and expenses. The idea behind Special Damages is to make sure that you are not out of pocket financially from anything you lose out on or have to spend money on that is directly related to the accident or injuries.
Factoring in overtime to your loss of earnings
Lost earnings is one of the more common forms of Special Damages, and when you take the principle of making sure you do no lose out on anything financially, you can recover lost overtime. We normally evidence this by asking our instructed medical expert to comment on the reasonableness of the loss and then looking at your recent earnings prior to the whiplash injury happening.
We accomplish this by looking at your wage slips before the accident to see how much overtime you were earning on average, and we can even accept letters from employers to show that you could have earned more. As long as there is evidence to show that you lost out on overtime because of your whiplash injury we can look to include it in the claim.
Not all law firms consider such losses and expenses claims though. Some who work to tight budgets (particularly when referred form insurers) will sometimes either not bother or actively not seek these losses for you. Instructing a good expert injury lawyer is often key to maximising your claim.
As our name suggests – The Injury Lawyers – we only help people for injury compensation cases. This is our speciality and our aim is to always fight for the maximum amount for you.
Need help and advice? Just call 0800 634 7575.
