What Happens if You Can No Longer Work After a Car Accident?

Losing the ability to work is one of the most financially devastating consequences of a serious car crash. Medical bills and ongoing treatment costs pile up while income disappears, and the gap between what you can earn now and what your career would have produced over your lifetime can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Indiana personal injury law provides a path to recover that loss, but the process is more involved than recovering past medical expenses.

At Sarkisian Law, our car accident attorneys handle these claims throughout Lake County, Porter County, and Northwest Indiana, and earning-capacity cases require a specific approach to build correctly.

Here is what the law allows you to recover and how those claims actually work.

Lost Wages and Lost Earning Capacity Are Two Separate Claims

Most people understand that a personal injury claim can recover wages lost during recovery. If a back injury kept you out of work for twelve weeks, those twelve weeks of lost income are recoverable as past lost wages. This is the more straightforward part of the economic loss claim, supported primarily by employment records and pay stubs.

Lost earning capacity is a different and generally larger claim. It covers the income you will not be able to earn in the future because your injuries have permanently reduced what you can do. A warehouse worker with a permanent spinal injury who can no longer perform physical labor, an electrician who loses function in their dominant hand, a truck driver with seizure disorder resulting from a traumatic brain injury, these workers are not just temporarily out of work.

Their capacity to earn at the level they would have reached is permanently diminished. Indiana law allows them to recover for that loss, projecting forward over their expected working life.

How Lost Earning Capacity Is Calculated

Lost earning capacity is not simply your current salary multiplied by the years until retirement. The calculation accounts for your career trajectory, projected raises, advancement, and industry wage growth that you would have experienced but for the injury. A worker in their 30s at an early career wage has a different loss than a worker at the same wage who is 55.

Vocational experts and forensic economists are typically retained to build these projections. The vocational expert assesses what you can no longer do, what occupations remain available to you given your limitations, and what those occupations pay compared to your prior career path. The forensic economist translates that wage differential into a present value figure, accounting for inflation and the time value of money over a projected working life. These experts provide testimony and reports that give a jury or an insurance company negotiating a settlement a quantified basis for the future economic loss.

Evidence that supports a strong earning capacity claim includes complete employment and promotion history, federal and state tax returns for several years before the crash, expert opinion from the treating physicians on permanent functional limitations, and vocational assessment reports.

How Comparative Fault Reduces Your Economic Damages

Indiana's modified comparative fault system under Indiana Code § 34-51-2 applies to economic damages, including lost wages and lost earning capacity. If you are found partially at fault for the crash, your recovery is reduced by your assigned fault percentage. If you are found more than 50% at fault, you recover nothing.

In cases with large earning capacity claims, insurance companies have a significant financial incentive to argue that the injured person contributed to the crash. A 20% fault finding on a $1 million earning capacity claim reduces the recovery by $200,000. That math drives aggressive fault arguments even in cases where the liability picture is relatively clear. How fault is litigated in these cases matters as much as how the earning capacity is calculated.

Social Security Disability as a Separate and Parallel Option

When injuries prevent someone from working entirely, Social Security Disability Insurance is a separate federal program that may provide income replacement independent of any personal injury claim. SSDI is available to workers who have paid into Social Security and who have a medical condition that prevents them from engaging in any substantial gainful activity for at least 12 months.

SSDI and a personal injury claim are not mutually exclusive. Pursuing one does not foreclose the other, and many seriously injured people pursue both simultaneously. However, receiving both can create financial considerations; some personal injury settlements may affect SSDI benefit calculations, and the documentation requirements for SSDI can overlap with what is needed for the injury claim. An attorney from our firm who is familiar with both processes can help structure a recovery that accounts for this.

The SSDI application process is lengthy and frequently requires an initial denial and appeal before benefits are approved, which is another reason not to rely on it as a sole financial bridge while a personal injury claim is pending.

Why Insurers Contest Earning Capacity Claims More Than Any Other Damage

Past medical expenses and past lost wages are documented with bills and pay stubs; the numbers are concrete and hard to dispute. Future earning capacity is projected, which means it is open to interpretation and counterargument. Insurance companies exploit this by retaining their own vocational experts who reach different conclusions, by arguing that the injured person has residual earning capacity in lower-paying fields, and by highlighting any aspect of the person's prior employment history that suggests unstable earnings or career stagnation.

Pre-existing conditions receive particular attention. If a pre-existing back condition contributed to the severity of a spinal injury, the insurer will argue that the full earning loss cannot be attributed to the crash. Indiana law does allow recovery for the aggravation of a pre-existing condition, but establishing the line between what the crash caused and what existed before requires detailed medical history and expert testimony.

Documentation That Supports a Full Recovery

The foundation of a strong lost-earning-capacity claim is built long before litigation. Gathering complete employment records and tax returns from several years before the crash establishes a pre-injury baseline. Consistent medical treatment with a treating physician who documents work restrictions, functional limitations, and prognosis in detail provides the medical basis. A formal functional capacity evaluation, conducted by a physical or occupational therapist, objectively measures what a person can and cannot do and serves as the foundation for the vocational expert's opinion.

The more thoroughly the economic loss is documented, the harder it is for the insurer to substitute its own narrative for the actual numbers.

Talk to Our Car Accident Attorneys About Your Economic Loss Claim

If your injuries prevent you from returning to the work you did before the crash, the full scope of your financial loss is likely larger than what has been offered or discussed. Sarkisian Law has handled serious injury claims across Northwest Indiana since 1981. Contact us for a free consultation to talk through what your injury has cost you and what Indiana law allows you to recover.