If you’ve been in some sort of accident, whether it’s a work injury, a car accident or an incident at someone else’s business, you might have to spend time in a hospital or at home in bed, unable to work.
When you’re not working, that means you can’t earn money, creating a financial hardship in addition to the physical one.
Fears Nachawati is an Austin work injury law firm who deals with personal injury cases, as well. We’ve come up with a few different ways you should still be able to recover lost wages after you’ve been hurt in an accident.
4 Ways To Recover Lost Wages After An Injury
These options don’t all work together, but there might be one or two that you can use to help offset any lost wages.
Disability Insurance
While it might take a while to get paid, many accident victims can receive compensation through their disability insurance policy. However, it’s important to note that many of these policies have provisions that prevent them from making payments to people who are already getting payments from an auto insurance policy.
PIP Insurance (Personal Injury Protection)
In Texas, insurance companies must provide PIP insurance to customers, which allows qualified victims to get compensated for their lost wages, usually up to a limit of $2,500. In most cases, PIP coverage pays up to 80 percent of a wage loss claim.
Bodily Injury and/or Uninsured Motorist Policy
If a car accident victim has a Bodily Injury or Uninsured Motorist insurance policy, they can be compensated in one lump sum, as opposed to multiple payments over time.
Other Types of Employment Compensation
Remember that when you are looking for compensation after a work injury, there are other things to consider besides just your lost wages:
Sick Days: If you used a few of your sick days while recovering from your work injury, you have a right to be reimbursed for those days, since they won’t be available to you later on when you really might be sick.
Vacation Days: The above goes along with this, too. If you’ve used vacation days to offset the work you’ve missed while recovering from a work injury, you can seek reimbursement.
Bonus Days: These are different from sick and vacation days, as they are national holidays, birthdays, and other types of days you might normally have gotten paid for had you been able to work, but the idea is the same: you can get them back if used for a work injury.
Fears Nachawati is an Austin work injury law firm that has dealt with hundreds of personal injury cases in the workplace, and they’re available for a free consultation if you’re in the area. You can call them at (512) 535-2206 to find out more