Car Accidents — Damages — Early retirement or sale of a business
If you are injured in a car accident then you are entitled to recover in a lawsuit not only for your injuries and property damage, but also for your economic loss. Your personal injury lawyer will help you determine your full economic loss.
The most basic form of economic loss is lost income from wages. However, you might also lose future income through a forced early retirement or a forced sale of a business.
Early retirement
Juries accept that an injury may result in a shorter work life expectancy. Even when an injury heals, the possibility of early retirement is an element in determining the financial loss. For example, if you sustained a broken bone, the possibility of developing post-traumatic arthritis and other factors can curtail your career.
In this situation, your personal injury lawyer will probably have your doctor include in his or her report whether your injury is permanent and what effect the injury has on your work life expectancy.
The loss or diminution of work life expectancy can be extremely significant because the loss is future, occurring at the end of your career when you would be at your highest earning capacity. It will take an economist to estimate what earnings you could have expected in the last years of your career.
Premature sale of asset
Sometimes injuries force a person to sell a business or other significant asset prematurely.
Establishing the amount of loss in these situations can be complicated, and can require expert testimony in the lawsuit from an economist and an industry consultant.