Bellingham bike accident victims struggle with lost wages after their accidents. Here’s how these costs are calculated by a personal injury lawyer to help victims financially recover from their bike accident.
Lost Wages
You’re by now familiar with the meaning of medical damages from a Bellingham bike accident, and know how these costs can impact an accident victim’s life. Lost wages are another type of impact a bike accident can have on an accident victim. They are another kind of economic damage, like medical damages. Bike accident victims, like all car accident victims, can recover lost wage compensation from time taken away from work due to their injury and recovery. Lost wages cover time missed from work for keeping doctors’ and other health care providers appointments, and physical therapy sessions.
Calculating lost wage damages entails taking the employee’s hourly wage and multiplying this number by the amount of hours or days missed from work. What if a bike accident victim is an independent contractor? It gets more complicated. Sometimes an expert witness such as an economist needs to weigh in with a formula for calculating the bike accident victim’s lost wages.
Here is the most important thing you can do to prove wage loss in your accident claim.
Pain and Suffering Damages
Bike accidents can leave victims with serious and debilitating injuries. This can mean serious and painful medical procedures, treatments, and physical therapy. One positive about this trauma is that it is compensable in the form of monetary damages.
There is no exact formula to figure pain and suffering damages, unlike medical bills and lost wages. Factors that contribute to the calculation for pain and suffering are:
- Permanent nature of injuries and symptoms. The longer they last, the higher the compensation.
- Length of recovery time
- Whether or not the accident victim’s conditions or symptoms are possible to alleviate; if so, how and when.
- If medication can relieve or eliminate symptoms.
- Likelihood of future medical procedures and/or surgeries.
- If the accident victim can still maintain the same lifestyle and quality of life as before the accident.
- If the accident victim can still take part in the same personal and professional activities as before the accident.
- Whether or not the accident victim’s life expectancy has been reduced.
There is a lot of subjectivity in calculating pain and suffering in a Bellingham bike accident victim’s case. Often, we at Bill Coats Law will hire a medical expert who can testify about the expected length of our client’s symptoms, and whether or not the accident victim will need further procedures or surgeries. It is also important to link the accident victim’s injuries, symptoms and damages to the bike accident, and a medical expert can provide this testimony as well.
How are medical bills paid after a car accident? Find out on Bill Coats Law’s YouTube channel.