Court Opinion

ID: 9625215
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:31:59.83709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:03.415330
License: Public Domain

Birdsong, Judge,
dissenting.
I agree that to. allow an expert to predict the rate of inflation for sixty years to come is too speculative.
In arriving at the deceased’s economic value, it is proper to utilize mortality tables to estimate life expectancy,^ and it is proper to assume that the deceased would have graduated from high school or college. It is also permissible to use today’s figures regarding yearly wages of high school and college graduates, but to allow an expert to say that there will be five percent (5%) annual inflation for the next sixty years removes the estimate of economic value from predictability into speculation. As the expert witness himself testified, based upon a five percent annual inflation rate, a $12,000 Cadillac one hundred years hence would cost $1,500,000.
I am persuaded that the reasoning of the United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, in the case of Johnson v. Penrod Drilling, 510 F2d 234, 236, is sound *503law.
I am authorized to state that Judge Webb joins in this dissent.