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When someone is injured seriously enough not to be able to work, getting enough money to live and support oneself is always a concern. If you are injured in an accident, there are a variety of factors that are taken into consideration to determine the amount of money that person may be eligible to receive. A negligence lawsuit is usually involved. During the negligence lawsuit, the financial compensation the person who has been in an accident receives is based on mostly the plaintiff’s principle of loss.
Essentially, this means that anyone who has received personal injuries in an auto accident is entitled to get compensated for all expenses and damages that the person has received due to their injuries, if the accident is caused by the negligent actions of another person. Expenses and losses include future medical expenses, rehabilitation expenses, loss of future earnings, pain and suffering and miscellaneous expenses determined during the time of the lawsuit.
A lawsuit filed by a person injured in a motor vehicle accident in Ontario is similar to any other personal injury claim. The types of lawsuits and the amount of money being sought out, and ultimately paid are determined mostly by the loss of future earning and the expected future costs of care.
Self Employed Victims
In Canada, it’s estimated that approximately three million people are self-employed.Looking at it percentage wise, this makes up about 16% of Canada’s workforce. Toronto is a large city which means the amount of self-employed people in the city is high; roughly 225,000 people say they are self-employed. With numbers like these, it’s not surprising that personal injury lawyers often find themselves in the situation where they need to prove the past and future earnings of self-employed plaintiffs.
This can be a challenge because finding concrete numbers of hypothetical earnings is difficult. Some would say it’s subjective and based on the value the self-employed worker sees in him- or herself and the value of that business. And often, as businesses grow, their value increases. So a self-employed individual in Year 2 of their business would likely be earning significantly more in Year 5, but that’s difficult to prove. This means that when personal injury lawyers in Kingston representing self-employed individuals come up with an amount of money to represent the amount of lost earnings, it can become a major point of debate. Calculating, and then proving, future and past loss of earnings for those who work for themselves is more difficult than figuring out those amounts for those who work for themselves.
Claimants who find themselves in this situation need to make sure that the personal injury lawyer they hire has the skills and experience in a self-employed injury claim. Such a claim is more difficult to make and requires a special set of skills. A personal injury lawyer with skills in filing a injury claims needs to do the following:
• Establish the credibility of the plaintiff and the credibility of their business.
• Analyze past earnings and then create a model to demonstrate financial loss in the future thereby proving the diminished earning capacity the person would experience as a result of the injuries.