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.

Close to three years ago, John*, 34, was an assistant signalman with three years on the job with LIRR.

One morning while running innerduct under a platform, a large piece of concrete debris – a leftover from an old platform – broke off pinching his right wrist and trapping him under the platform. A coworker had to lift the concrete off his wrist. What he thought at the time was an injury he could work through and recover from, turned out to be career ending.

John reported his injury and was temporarily removed from service pending a visit to an orthopedist the next day. That began 22 months of referrals to specialists and four separate EMG studies, because John developed clawing of his ring and pinky fingers. With that also came 50% loss grip strength in his right, dominant, hand. The railroad medically disqualified him from his job 10 months later.

This month a jury ordered LIRR to pay John more than $3 million for his injury after it was revealed that the railroad knew about the old hazardous concrete but didn’t make any effort to remove it. What is remarkable about this case is how the verdict numbers break down:

Lost wages are an objective cornerstone of any claim resolution. If you’re trying to figure out the value of your case there are other factors to consider also, like the severity of your injury or how many years you have before retirement. Click HERE for more. But the starting place for every injury claim is this: How much did I lose in wages?

The concept of the calculation is straight forward. But the mathematics can get confusing. Let me break it down: