Court Opinion

ID: 9471058
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:24:27.532539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:15.434481
License: Public Domain

TATE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in all aspects of the majority opinion, with this exception: I have reservations about our disallowance on appeal of maintenance beyond eight dollars per day, at least without a remand. However, I ultimately concur, on my understanding of the limited holding of the majority.
As the memorandum opinion of the district court and the plaintiff Curry’s post-trial brief show, the Western District of Louisiana has a jurisprudential rule by which, in the absence of contrary proof, fifteen dollars per day is presumed to be an equitable rate of maintenance.1 The district court *897relied upon this jurisprudential presumption, in the absence of a showing by the defendant that the daily rate of maintenance should be lower.
I do not understand the majority opinion to disallow use by a district court of such a presumption created by its own jurisprudential rule and enunciated by its own decisional law, as known by all parties prior to trial. Rather, I understand the majority as holding that in the present case the presumption was rebutted by the uncontradicted testimony elicited from the plaintiff and his parents that showed that, in fact, he lived with them during the period for which maintenance and cure is sought.
Under these circumstances, and especially since the defendant did not contest the right of the plaintiff to receive the eight dollars per day maintenance actually paid him during the period for which maintenance was due, the majority felt that the plaintiff had not borne his burden of proving that he was entitled to the additional seven dollars per day awarded by the district court merely on the basis of the jurisprudential presumption, which the majority felt had been dispelled by the evidence that the plaintiff lived at home without undue personal living expenses.
With this understanding of the limited holding by the majority, I concur in its reversal of the maintenance award in excess of eight dollars per day.

. The defendant’s post-trial brief did not expressly argue against the existence of the rule, but, rather, relied upon the many decisions which (under prior jurisprudential rules of a similar nature) had awarded $8.00 per day maintenance.