What Categories of Payment Can You Expect for Being Hurt?

There are five main categories:

1. Pain and suffering
2. Past wage loss
3. Future wage loss
4. Out-of-pocket expenses
5. Future out-of-pocket expenses

The names that lawyers use to label these are not always the same but we attempt to communicate with you in plain English.

Pain and Suffering Payment

This is a payment awarded to you for:

• The pain that you suffer
• For all of the inconvenience that you had as a result

How much pain you are suffering is self-explanatory.

The "inconvenience” is for:

• All of the things that you can't do on account of the injury
• All of the things that you have to do because of the injury

For example:

• I have to go to the doctor and to physiotherapy.
• I can't go watch my son and daughter play soccer.
• I can't go play hockey.
• I can't go dancing with my wife.
• I wake up in the night because of the pain and can't go back to sleep.
• I am getting depressed because I can't do the things that I used to be able to do and there appears to be no end in sight.
• I have no energy left to do anything when I come home from work.

Payment Limit for Pain and Suffering

In 1978, the Supreme Court of Canada placed a limit of $100,000.00 for pain and suffering. It has been adjusted for inflation since then and the current upper limit is now approximately $351,000.00.

This upper limit is reserved for those with severe spinal cord injuries, severe brain injuries, or other physical or psychological injuries that are devastating to your way of life.

Past Wage Loss

You are entitled to recover what you would have made had you not been injured. If it is a motor vehicle injury, you are entitled to the amount you would've received less than what would have been deducted from your pay for income tax, CPP and UI.

Future Wage Loss

This is usually a lot more complicated, but not always.

You are entitled to the amount that you would have earned in the future if the injury had not happened.

If you cannot return to your regular job but can do another job that pays less, it is based on the difference between what you would've made and what you are making.

There are also deductions made from this amount to deal with the possibility that bad things would've happened to you in the future, preventing you from earning that income.

Proving loss of future income usually involves hiring any number of experts (psychiatrists, physicians, chiropractors, etc.) to give the necessary opinions that you will be disabled in the future and unable to work, and then providing opinion evidence as to what your future loss is.

Out-of-Pocket Expenses

This is for such things as:

• User fees for physiotherapy
• Over-the-counter medications
• Taxi fares to and from your medical appointments
• Kilometers that you put on your car and the parking fees you paid for to go to appointments
• Any other money that you spent to deal with the fact that you were injured

Future Out-of-Pocket Expenses

If at the time that you go to trial or settle, you are entitled to receive money to pay for what you will spend in the future as a result of being injured.

These would be for the same kinds of things that you spent money on out to the time of the settlement or the trial.

Some examples would be:

• Physiotherapy over-the-counter medication drugs
• Hiring someone to do your housecleaning and yard work
• Buying A353 Rub
• Hiring people to come to help clothe and feed you
• Providing living accommodation
• Paying for new prosthetics

Contact Us

Yearwood – Dyson* Lawyers offers a free 1-hour interview for all personal injury claims. Contact us or book an appointment online. For your convenience, we can meet you at our offices in Vancouver or Surrey. We also offer home, hospital and workplace visits by appointment.

Contact Pat Yearwood or Chris Dyson today.

Contact Us

Yearwood – Dyson* Lawyers

2 Locations to serve you:

2, 9613 - 192nd Street

Surrey, BC V4N 4C7

400 - 601 W. Broadway

Vancouver, BC V5Z 4C2

*An Association of Law Corporations