Working With An Economist to Calculate Lost Wages in a FELA Case For An Injured Railroad Worker

The specialized area of representing injured railroaders who get hurt on the job is a large part of what I do each day as a personal injury attorney.  I have represented hundreds of railroad workers who got hurt on the job since 1997 when I first started doing this kind of specialized FELA work.  One of the rules of FELA trial work is that the law requires that the claimant attorney hire an economist to crunch the numbers to figure out how much future lost wages are in today’s dollars.

I’ve worked with many economists particularly in the Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond, Virginia area.  I know almost all of the economists who regularly do this kind of forensic work.  Typically it is a professor at a local university or college who does this forensic work as a sideline or in retirement.

The biggest factor in the value of railroad worker injury cases is the huge amount of money that they lose if they get permanently knocked out of their job.  For example, if a 50‑year‑old conductor gets hurt on the job in a way that he loses the ability to do his job in the future he will have lost his wages of say $70,000.00 a year plus great union benefits including health insurance for the rest of his work life.

What the economist does is to calculate how much money that is over time through a retirement age of say 65 and then reduces it to present value to figure out how much money the jury would have to give the worker to put in the bank to pay him his wages that he has lost into the future.

This is required in any FELA case.  As an experienced Virginia (VA) railroad worker injury lawyer I am very familiar with how to do this and who to go to to get the calculation done.  If you or a loved one has been hurt on the job working for Norfolk Southern, CSX or any major railroad please give me a call so I can see what I can do to help you.

The Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Hampton railroad injury/FELA law firm, Cooper Hurley, handles railroad worker’s injuries and injuries on rail crossings in Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia, as well as automobile, truck, and motorcycle injuries and slip and fall cases, wrongful death and medical malpractice. John Cooper and Jim Hurley have over 40 years of combined experience in handling serious injury claims. Attorney John Cooper has been named to Virginia “Super Lawyers” since 2010.

Cooper Hurley represents families who have lost a loved one through another party’s fault in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News and throughout VA, and north eastern North Carolina. We always put the best interests of our clients first. The firm is recognized by other lawyers as “AV” by Martindale-Hubbell, a national attorney rating service, for our top level of legal skill and highest ethical standards. If you need help or advice about a serious injury, please call us or contact us through this website.