Opinion ID: 1964909
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Evidence of Present-Day Value

Text: The defendant asserts that the trial justice erred when he failed to instruct the jury to reduce the plaintiff's future damage award for the loss of his expected earnings over the course of his work life expectancy to its present-day value. The plaintiff counters that the defendant waived his right to raise this assertion, because he failed to provide the jury with any evidence or method by which the jury could have calculated the reduction of those damages to their present-day value, and because he failed to move for judgment as a matter of law on the ground that no evidence of present-day value had been presented to the jury. Rhode Island case law has consistently recognized the practice of reducing damage awards for loss of future earning capacity to their present-day value. See, e.g., Blue Ribbon Beef Co. v. Napolitano, 696 A.2d 1225, 1229 (R.I.1997) (determining the date to which estimated lost-profits damages should have been discounted to obtain their then-present value) (emphasis added); Markham v. Cross Transportation, Inc., 119 R.I. 213, 223, 376 A.2d 1359, 1364 (1977) (upholding calculations of the present-day value of future income where those calculations considered economic trends in determining loss). [C]alculating the present [day] value of future damages involves two steps: estimating the future stream of money; and discounting the future stream to present [day] value. Reilly v. United States, 665 F.Supp. 976, 992 (D.R.I.1987) (citing Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. v. Pfeifer, 462 U.S. 523, 537-38, 103 S.Ct. 2541, 2551, 76 L.Ed.2d 768 (1963)). To assist a trial jury in making its calculations, present-day value tables may be presented to a jury, but these tables are not controlling. See Turner, 53 R.I. at 166, 165 A. at 373. However, as we have stated previously, allegations of error committed at trial are considered waived if they were not effectively raised at trial, despite their articulation at the appellate level. State v. Morris, 744 A.2d 850, 859 (R.I.2000) (quoting State v. Bettencourt, 723 A.2d 1101, 1107-08 (R.I.1999)). In the instant case, defense counsel, in his summation to the jury, at no time mentioned that it should discount any potential damages to their present-day value. Such omission, we can assume, was because he expected plaintiff's counsel to do so, or in any event, that the trial justice would do so when instructing the jury. The plaintiff's counsel, in arguing to the jury, did discuss the plaintiff's damages and did discuss methods of calculation for those damages. He then suggested approximate amounts that it could award from those calculations. However, he failed to mention anything about discounting any of the plaintiff's damages to their present day value. Defense counsel, we note, failed to move for judgment as a matter of law on the ground that no evidence of present-day value had been presented to the jury, and offered no objection to the plaintiff's argument concerning damages at the time that it was made. It was only after final arguments had been concluded, and after the court's instruction had been given to the jury, that defense counsel first requested the trial justice to re-instruct the jury to discount the damages for future loss of earnings to their present-day value. The trial justice was unable to do so because there had been no evidence presented to the jury about such present-day value calculation. Consequently, the defendant's belated request for an instruction was ineffective and, if given, would have appeared to be a repudiation by the trial justice of plaintiff's counsel's closing argument, and certainly would have been prejudicial to the plaintiff. We conclude, therefore, that because of defense counsel's failure to move for judgment as a matter of law or to make timely objection, the trial justice did not err in refusing to re-instruct the jury to discount the plaintiff's damage award for future loss of earnings to its present-day value. We note for the trial bar, however, that in view of the complexity of these calculations, we believe that a trial jury ordinarily is incapable of making such a determination without the assistance of expert testimony. Consequently, in the future, we will expect the party seeking those damages to present specific evidence of their present-day value to the jury.