Can I Work if I Have an Active Personal Injury Case?
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If you’ve recently been injured in a personal injury case you may be wondering if you can go to work without harming your case. After all, you need to get some income into your home, and you can’t wait the months and months that it will take to resolve your case before you pay your next set of routine bills.
Fortunately, you may absolutely go back to work so long as your doctor has released you to go back to work. In fact, you should return to work as soon as your doctor says you can, since you will not be entitled to lost wages for weeks you chose not to work.
There may be cases where you may not be able to return to your old job. In this case you will be obligated to try to seek work you can do, in order to mitigate losses.
Can going back to work be used against your pain and suffering claim?
No. Insurance companies don’t get to have it both ways. They can’t demand you mitigate your lost wage losses by returning to work as soon as you can and then turn around and use that to prove that you’re not suffering as much as you say you are.
If you are still in a massive amount of pain we can generally use methods to prove that without forcing you to remain out of work. In fact, if you do return to work you may have to request reasonable accommodations, and the need for those accommodations can be used to strengthen your claim.
How will you live if you can’t go back to work?
The one thing you don’t want to do is go back to work against doctor’s orders. This can exacerbate your injury and foul the chain of causality that your case relies on to get you compensated for your accident or injury.
Hopefully you have taken out some sort of disability insurance that you can use to pay your injury claim. You may be able to get some other types of public assistance, or perhaps your spouse can go back to work while you heal.
As a last resort there are companies that offer loans against a future settlement, but be careful. They typically charge exorbitant interest rates, and if you don’t win your case you could end up owing a large loan you don’t have the means to repay.
Not sure whether or not to return to work?
These are the sorts of questions we are happy to answer for our clients. If you’re not sure what to do in your specific case, reach out to our law office. We’ll be happy to discuss your upcoming claim with you.
See also:
How Does a Personal Injury Attorney Respond to a Low Settlement Offer?
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If you’ve recently been injured in a personal injury case you may be wondering if you can go to work without harming your case. After all, you need to get some income into your home, and you can’t wait the months and months that it will take to resolve your case before you pay your next set of routine bills.
Fortunately, you may absolutely go back to work so long as your doctor has released you to go back to work. In fact, you should return to work as soon as your doctor says you can, since you will not be entitled to lost wages for weeks you chose not to work.
There may be cases where you may not be able to return to your old job. In this case you will be obligated to try to seek work you can do, in order to mitigate losses.
Can going back to work be used against your pain and suffering claim?
No. Insurance companies don’t get to have it both ways. They can’t demand you mitigate your lost wage losses by returning to work as soon as you can and then turn around and use that to prove that you’re not suffering as much as you say you are.
If you are still in a massive amount of pain we can generally use methods to prove that without forcing you to remain out of work. In fact, if you do return to work you may have to request reasonable accommodations, and the need for those accommodations can be used to strengthen your claim.
How will you live if you can’t go back to work?
The one thing you don’t want to do is go back to work against doctor’s orders. This can exacerbate your injury and foul the chain of causality that your case relies on to get you compensated for your accident or injury.
Hopefully you have taken out some sort of disability insurance that you can use to pay your injury claim. You may be able to get some other types of public assistance, or perhaps your spouse can go back to work while you heal.
As a last resort there are companies that offer loans against a future settlement, but be careful. They typically charge exorbitant interest rates, and if you don’t win your case you could end up owing a large loan you don’t have the means to repay.
Not sure whether or not to return to work?
These are the sorts of questions we are happy to answer for our clients. If you’re not sure what to do in your specific case, reach out to our law office. We’ll be happy to discuss your upcoming claim with you.
See also:
How Does a Personal Injury Attorney Respond to a Low Settlement Offer?