Proving Economic Damages in a Wrongful Death Case

In terms of a jury presentation, attorneys often disagree about the best approach to demonstrate the economic losses caused by a wrongful death. If the decedent was a substantial wage earner who lost, not only substantial earnings, but also valuable fringe benefits such as 401(k), profit sharing and other similar benefits, one school of thought is to hire an economist who can project for a jury the lost income stream over the working life of the decedent (typically up to age 65 or 70) and then through economic calculation reduce the loss back to present cash value, adjusted for inflation, raises and bonuses over the course of the decedent’s lifetime. This can be difficult because it is always a challenge to prove what the bonuses and raises would have been to the decedent based on his or her earnings history. A second school of thought is to dispense with the necessity and expense of the expert witness economist and simply introduce the Annuity Mortality Table showing what the typical age at death is of a male or female worker in this state and then to extrapolate from the earnings history of the decedent what wages could have been earned prior to death. For example: If a decedent died at age 40 earning $50,000.00 a year presumably they would work up to age 65 making a minimum of $50,000.00 per year for 25 years which would translate to a loss of $1,250,000.00. If this figure were adjusted for inflation but then reduced to its present cash value, usually the reduction to present cash value offsets the adjustment for inflation. Therefore, one can comfortably argue to a jury that the minimum loses, in terms of economic losses for such a wage earner, would be $1,250,000.00. Where there are fringe benefits lost such as profit sharing or 401(k) benefits, the analysis would be the same. Thus, you would merely present the tax returns, the W-2’s and the testimony of supervisors and co-workers to establish what the earnings history was, and then simply argue to the jury how they should go about calculating the future lost wages based on the earnings history.
Of course, every case is different and there is no real basis to conclude that one approach is necessarily superior to the other. In different cases over the years, our firm has used economists and have also relied on earnings history records alone in demonstrating this component of the full value of the life of the decedent. Either way, it is obviously necessary for any attorney in wrongful death case to introduce sufficient evidence to demonstrate to the jury the earnings capacity of the decedent so that complete compensation can be obtained for the economic component of the “full value” of the life of the decedent. Where economic dependency is established (a surviving wife with small children as an example) our experience is that Georgia juries will award as part of a wrongful death jury verdict full compensation for proven lost wages.