Opinion ID: 685599
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Amount of Front Pay

Text: 48 PHA asserts that even if some front pay was appropriate, the jury's award of $500,000 was excessive, considering Feldman's age, experience, and future likelihood of employment. While PHA's argument is cast in terms of excessiveness, it, at times, seems to be faulting the district court for failing to instruct the jury on mitigation of damages, i.e., on what the jury should do if it believed Feldman would be capable of securing other employment at some point prior to retirement age. The district court did instruct the jury on this point, however. Its charge was not materially different from that requested by the defense and was not objected to by it. The court's instruction was: 49 Now, award of front pay or future damages is used to make the plaintiff whole for future expected losses. In calculating such an award, you must consider the expected future damages caused by defendants' wrongful conduct from the date of judgment to the date of retirement by the plaintiff, less any wages and benefits he might receive during that same period of time. In other words, future damages in this case consists of what Mr. Feldman would have earned in wages and benefits working at PHA, less whatever he earns from any other employment he undertakes from the date judgment is entered to the date of his expected retirement. 50 If PHA proves that Mr. Feldman unjustifiably failed or fails to take a new job of like kind, status and pay which is available to him or he fails to make reasonable efforts to find a new job, you must also subtract any amount he could have earned in that new job after today. 51 Based on these instructions, the jury awarded to Feldman front pay of $500,000. The jury's verdict may not be disturbed unless the record is critically devoid of the minimal amount of evidence upon which the jury could have reached its verdict. See Swineford, 15 F.3d at 1265; Dutton v. Wolpoff and Abramson, 5 F.3d 649, 653 (3rd Cir.1993). On this record, we think that the evidence supports the jury award. 52 Feldman's actuarial-economic expert testified extensively on plaintiff's lost future income, making several sophisticated calculations that produced various figures, depending upon which criteria he applied. The $500,000 award, however, was over $30,000 less than the lowest figure calculated by Feldman's expert. Defendants called no expert of their own, and they offered no evidence to controvert the testimony of Feldman's expert. 53 The jury's award, therefore, was sufficiently supported by the evidence, and we do not think that $500,000 is so excessive as to shock the conscience of this court. See Savarese v. Agriss, 883 F.2d 1194, 1205 (3d Cir.1989).