Personal Injury

Examples of how we can help

Career Progression

A plaintiff’s career progression is often limited by their accident. Certain professions such as nurses, teachers and police officers will have graded increases in salary linked to years of experience. Apprentices will not always be apprentices and will progress to qualified tradespersons and maybe to their own business. Professionals such as lawyers, accountants and doctors will have quite rapid increases in earnings once they have commenced working.

Fringe Benefits

A plaintiff’s net wage may be significantly increased by fringe benefits and salary packaging, which may not be evident on pay slips or group certificates.

The use of companies, partnerships and trusts can distort the initial view of a plaintiff’s loss. We can unravel the complex structures that people put in place for tax and asset protection purposes, and present the plaintiff’s loss in an easy to understand manner.

Self Employed Plaintiffs

Self employed plaintiffs represent a particular problem for personal injury litigation. Economic loss may be disguised by the nature of their business operations, or alternatively the apparent loss is due to factors unrelated to the accident. Understanding how the plaintiff’s accident has affected their business is one of the areas in which we excel.

Catastrophic Injuries

The major component of catastrophic injury claims is not economic loss but care and future equipment costs. We calculate the present value of future care and equipment needs. We provide a corrected calculated summary for a variety of expert reports. Funds management costs are now a major component of catastrophic injury cases.

Lost Opportunity

A tradesman building his own home on weekends may suffer a loss in his ability to complete the project or the cost of employing others to complete it. Similar lost opportunities include inability to complete a real estate contract due to the loss of income to cover the mortgage.

Loss of Superannuation

Many employees receive superannuation benefits in excess of the minimum; for example, some government employees are in defined benefits pension schemes. We research the benefits that a plaintiff receives and the type of fund, and then calculate the correct loss of superannuation.

Fox v Wood Calculations

In many cases, the Fox v Wood component is equal to the tax deducted by the workers’ compensation insurer. However, in cases where the employer pays workers’ compensation directly to the employee, or the employee has other income or returns to work on a part-time basis, the Fox v Wood component may be significant. In these cases the amount of tax deducted as shown on the workers’ compensation payments schedule may differ significantly from the correct Fox v Wood claim.