Florida Personal Injury Attorney Outlines Restoring Individual to Pre-Injury Status
Posted by Kolleen | Filed under Articles
A Boca Raton personal injury lawyer explains that an injured party must be restored to the position the individual would have otherwise occupied had the injury not occurred. This is to ensure that economic damages have indeed occurred and this is but one of the issues that must be resolved in order to provide the necessary inputs for a determination.
As a practice, the most common approach to gathering the necessary information is through either a fact-finding interview or questionnaire. The questionnaire is an effective way to gather the necessary data to estimate economic damages.
The type of information requested often includes:
- Personal – the date of the injury, level of education, marital status, race, age and dependents
- Pre-injury employment and earnings information
- Fringe benefits received
- Post-injury earnings and likelihood of future employment
- Household services provided before injury and after injury
A Florida personal injury attorney will prepare a calculation of present losses. The present loss period represents the time from the date of work stoppage to the date of anticipated trial date. The annual wages as of the date of injury serves as the basis for the projection and the final period of the present loss is prorated to the anticipated trial date.
The projection into the future of the base earnings commonly require consideration of growth factors such as historical growth trends, the rate of inflation and economic conditions. Of course projected gross wages are reduced by applicable taxes. Tax rates change over time and rates generally vary with income levels. Fringe benefits are an economic benefit that would also need special calculations depending on the economy.
Calculating future losses would be the next step in this process. The future loss represents their earnings that would have been produced had the injury not occurred. Household services that can no longer be performed due to the personal injury represent another component of economic damages. The replacement cost method is the most common method used to estimate the value of household services, in this case the amount it would cost to hire someone to perform the household duties the injured party can no longer perform.
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