So, you are driving your uber eats car along and you are hit by another car. What are your lost wages? Well, basically, you will have to show what your past uber eats wages are and that you are physically unable to work further. That is really hard to show unless you are undergoing surgery with persistent problems after surgery. The law says we can prove lost wages without an expert for past lost wages or wages from the time of crash to trial so that is not terribly difficult.
But, what if you are working under the table? Can you claim these losses? Nope. That is the risk you take in not paying taxes. You cannot document this income in any way, so it cannot be asserted as a loss. End of story there.
What if you are self-employed? These are the hardest legitimately claimed losses to collect. Often, the self-employed person has some documented wages but a lot of their losses come from not being able to put time into the business. The small business losses often come from jobs that the owner missed out on getting because they were recovering from their injuries. These are nigh impossible to prove. And, nigh is being generous.
What about real wage losses if you are over 65? These are very provable and collectible, but the jury has to believe that you would have kept working and were ABLE to keep working. So, your average non-physical laborer can likely make a stronger claim for future losses than your auto mechanic or construction worker as these jobs take a huge toll on people physically.
How do we prove these losses? Using the regular doctor experts plus a vocational expert to establish that you needed to use your right arm for your job and cannot do so fully anymore because of your surgery, hardware, scarring etc.