Damages for the Holidays? Lost earnings exist when vacation/sick time used for injury recovery

The experts at Lost Compensation were recently contacted by an attorney seeking advice on whether or not he should take a case. The plaintiff was injured in a typical slip and fall incident. The plaintiff incurred damages due to medical expenses, but the attorney was unsure if he should take the case because he didn't believe lost wages were recoverable. While the plaintiff was unable to work during his recovery time, his absense from work was fully covered by the vacation and sick time he had accrued over his years as an employee.

After our brief discussion, the attorney learned that although the plaintiff did not have a loss of earnings visible in his pay statements, he did in fact have recoverable damages in that area. Vacation and sick time provided to an employee in a work agreement has a real, and usually easily measured, dollar amount value. The loss of vacation and sick time can be valued at the rate the employee would have been paid had that time been spent working. That time is part of the benefits of the employment agreement and when an individual is unable to utilize that time as he wished due to an injury that another is repsonsible for, the losses are recoverable.