Brian is a 31 year-old LIRR electrician. Or at least he was until a portion of his ring finger on his right hand was severed in an on-the-job accident. He sued the railroad and after less than three days of trial, a jury awarded him almost $2 million for his injury and wage loss.

If you've been hurt, you already know what money you're out of pocket.

You know those bills you couldn't pay. You probably know how to put together a wage loss claim for past wages.  (If not, here is a link to a wage loss calculator that takes the work out of coming up with your wage loss. It even allows you to include lost overtime.)

But if your injury is going to keep you out of work into the future, and you either want to settle your case now, or you’ll never return to work, then you have something called future wage loss.  Figuring out how much you will lose in the future can be a little more speculative, but if you take the right factors into consideration, you can have a solid basis to make a claim for the money that you’ll lose down the road. 

In this blog I’ll explain how to calculate future wage loss with an example from a recent trial that I brought to verdict.

Do you need a lawyer to file a FELA claim? Not necessarily. In this blog we’ll discuss specific instances when it’s better to handle the claim yourself. 

I'm in the business of suing the railroad, it’s true. But I'm NOT in the business of taking money from hard-working railroad employees unnecessarily.

Frankly, there are plenty of situations where you don't need a lawyer.  Either on your own or with the help of a union representative, you are completely capable of negotiating a settlement of your FELA injury claim in the following scenarios if, and this is the crux of the FELA law, you can prove the railroad is at fault and the injuries are related to that railroad screw up. 

Armed with this information, you get a resolution that is satisfying both financially and personally. Who doesn't like being able to say they took care of business?