Court Opinion

ID: 9475944
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:43:16.735682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:02.282384
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially:
I concur in the result reached by the majority which affirms both as to liability and damages.
I write specially on the damages issue because I believe that the district court erred in declining to instruct the jury that it should award only the present value of lost future earnings, but I would hold that this error was harmless under the circumstances.
The Supreme Court has recently reiterated the long-standing rule that defendants in FELA cases are “entitled,” upon request, to such a jury instruction.1 St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co. v. Dickerson, 470 U.S. 409, 411, 105 S.Ct. 1347, 1348, 84 L.Ed.2d 303 (1985) (per curiam). But the Court has not spoken to the related but independent question of which party has the burden of proof with respect to factors that would either decrease or increase the gross amount of lost earnings to reflect their present value. This, in fact, is the issue that has mainly divided the lower federal courts on the general matter. Cf. e.g. Alma v. Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., 684 F.2d 622 (9th Cir.1982) (burden on defendant); DiSabatino v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., 724 F.2d 394 (3d Cir.1984) (burden on plaintiff). This circuit has not decided that issue and it is therefore an open one with us. Because I believe that its resolution actually controls the nature of a party’s entitlement to the instruction requested but not given here, I think we should decide it now.
On that open question, I would hold that each party has the burden with respect to factors that tend to favor its respective position: the plaintiff to prove that present value is more than total lost earnings, the defendant that it is less. This, rather than a rule that places the burden to establish present value exclusively on one or the other party seems to me both the most practical and the most conceptually sound basis for allocating the burden of proof on the issue. See generally F. James & G. Hazard Civil Procedure, § 7.8 (2d ed. 1977).
*159From this would necessarily flow the corollary rule that a party producing legally sufficient evidence on the issue is entitled to a jury instruction that adequately indicates to the jury how the evidence could be used to convert to present value, either up or down. In particular cases, of course, both sides might produce specific evidence (of inflation or deflation, interest trends, etc.) favorable to their positions. In such cases, each side would be entitled to specific instructions as to how its evidence if accepted might be used to adjust lost earning totals to present value.
On the other hand, failure to produce any specific evidence on the issue should have the normal effect of disentitling a party to any specific instruction on the issue. In some cases, this might require instructions specifically favorable to only one of the parties, where only that party produced evidence on the issue. In others, it might disentitle both parties to any specific instructions on the method of converting to present value. In the latter situation, however, both parties would still be entitled, upon request, to a general instruction that in computing any amount due for lost earnings the award should be for present value.2 That is what Dickerson seems to me unmistakably to hold, but I think that is all it holds. The fact that the Dickerson court referred only to defendant’s entitlement simply reflects the fact that it was the defendant in that case (as normally it would be) who objected to the failure to give any instruction on the issue.
Where the only entitlement is to such a general instruction, i.e., where neither party has introduced specific evidence on the issue, it is hard to see how the failure to give even a general instruction could be treated as prejudicial. Where a party has produced no specific evidence of factors affecting present value computation, the lack of any instruction on the present value issue would seem necessarily harmless error as to that party.
So I would hold here. In faithfulness to Dickerson’s most recent recognition of a right in the defendant to have the jury generally instructed to award only present value, it was error here to refuse such an instruction. But where, as here, defendant produced no specific evidence as to how, favorably to it, this should be done, the error is necessarily harmless.

. This jury instruction rule is in turn based upon the underlying "substantive-remedial" rule that, in conformity with the general "lump sum compensatory award” approach of federal law, the measure of compensability for a lost stream of expected income is necessarily its present value. See Jones & Mughlin Steel Corp. v. Pfeifer, 462 U.S. 523, 533, 103 S.Ct. 2541, 2548, 76 L.Ed.2d 768 (1983).

. In many cases opposing counsel undoubtedly tacitly agree not to introduce any specific present value evidence, mutually accepting that it would simply wash out or be offset by conflicting evidence, or would create more of a risk of damaging confusion than likelihood of benefit. Some courts have indeed adopted a "total offset" approach to avoid or minimize the difficult evidentiary problems that the underlying damages rule inevitably creates. See Pfeifer, 462 U.S. at 544-46, 103 S.Ct. at 2554-55. Certainly it should be possible under the federal rule for the parties formally to avoid, by stipulation, any need for or entitlement to even a general present value instruction.