Opinion ID: 1238457
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Present Worth of Future Earnings.

Text: Defendants contend that the court erred in failing to instruct the jury that future earnings should be reduced to present worth. It is generally agreed that when a party is unlawfully injured by another, and by reason thereof sustains loss of future earnings, only the present worth thereof should be allowed, that is to say the present worth at the time of the trial of the case. 25 C.J.S. 895; Chicago & N.W. Ry. Co. v. Ott, 33 Wyo. 200, 237 P. 238. For, as stated in 14 Minnesota Law Review 232: The reasoning behind the present value rule seems plausible. A plaintiff ought not recover a lump sum measuring the accumulated losses of the future years. Nor should he have a principal sum that will bear an annual rate of interest equal to the wages he has earned because that would leave the principal sum intact at his death. The present value of the future losses of this kind, it is said, is such a sum as will produce an annual rate of interest that together with a portion of the principal sum will afford to the plaintiff what his earned income would have been each remaining year of his life and be completely used up by the time of his death. The court gave the following instruction on the subject here considered: In arriving at your verdict as to the amount of damages for permanent injuries, if any, resulting in a permanent loss of earnings by plaintiff, if any, you may consider the mortality tables as tending to prove the life expectancy of the plaintiff. Such tables are not binding, however, and you may determine such life expectancy from your own observations of the plaintiff, and such other assistance as you may obtain from the evidence, and all the facts and circumstances in evidence, including such tables. You have a right to consider the probabilities of accident, sickness, or other happenings reasonably likely to terminate the results of plaintiff's injuries. No exceptions were taken to this instruction, nor was one offered in substitution thereof. It is a general rule that a party cannot complain of an instruction to which no exception is taken. 4 C.J.S. 700; Dec. Digest, Appeal & Error, § 216; David v. Graham, 31 Wyo. 239, 225 P. 789; Diamond Bros. v. Beckwith Quinn & Co., 17 Wyo. 333, 98 P. 889. That rule should apply in this case, unless perchance the error complained of is vital. A lengthy annotation on the subject is contained in 77 A.L.R. 1439 and 154 A.L.R. 706. In England and Canada no specific instruction on reduction of future earnings to present worth is necessary. It is sufficient if the jury is instructed to give such compensation as under all the circumstances they think is fair and reasonable, taking into consideration, among other items, future loss and damage. Cases from some thirteen jurisdictions of this country are cited which appear to hold that the court is bound to give a proper instruction on the subject, though not requested to do so. The cases from four jurisdictions are cited as holding that it is harmless not to give an instruction on the subject, if the instructions given are correct as a whole. Cases from sixteen different jurisdictions are cited as holding that failure to give such an instruction is not cause for reversal in the absence of a request to give such an instruction. Cases from six different jurisdictions are cited that the failure to give an instruction on the subject is not cause for reversal, if the damages allowed are not excessive. The author of the foregoing annotation concludes as follows, 77 A.L.R. 1466: And, therefore, it is submitted that the long line of authorities making reasonable or fair and just compensation the basis of recovery for future loss upholds the reasoning of the decisions which hold that a mere nondirection as to the present worth rule is not a cause for reversal, there having been no request for specific instructions in the matter, the general instructions actually given being as a whole good, and the damages awarded not being excessive. We think that we should adopt that view under the circumstances of this case. It is altogether probable that if counsel for the defendants had called the court's attention to the matter, the instruction given would have embodied their ideas on the subject. The plaintiff in this case, had he not been injured, and had earned the amount which he might have earned in the year before the trial of this case, namely, approximately $4,000 per year, would have earned the sum of approximately $56,000 during the remaining years of his expectancy of life; about $40,000 in ten years; about $32,000 in eight years and about $24,000 in six years. The jury allowed, as hereafter shown, the sum of $21,536.85 for loss of future earnings. So it is quite apparent that either by accident or design, they took the present worth of future earnings into consideration with the like effect as though a specific instruction on the subject had been given. Speaking of this point, the Supreme Court of Iowa in Ingebretsen v. Minneapolis & St. L.R. Co., 176 Iowa 74, 155 N.W. 327, 332, stated: The instruction, in the form given, does not inhibit or negative a computation of damages on the basis of present worth, and we cannot assume that the jury did not, in fact, so reach its determination. Such, indeed, would naturally, be the course of intelligent jurors in estimating a sum which would `fully and fairly compensate' the plaintiff for the wrong done him. As was well said in the Greenway Case, speaking of an instruction like the one given in this case: `It may well be assumed that the jurors appreciated, without explicit explanation, that they were to estimate the present value of future earnings lost to the injured person.'