Court Opinion

ID: 9711915
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:41:57.050709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:08.280575
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: I do not dispute the proposition, by now well established, that in wrongful death cases there is a presumption of substantial pecuniary loss to the next of kin (e.g., Flynn v. Vancil (1968), 41 Ill. 2d 236, 238; Knierim v. Izzo (1961), 22 Ill. 2d 73, 78; Hall v. Gillins (1958), 13 Ill. 2d 26, 31; City of Chicago v. Major (1857), 18 Ill. 349, 360; Yamada v. Hilton Hotel Corp. (1977), 60 Ill. App. 3d 101, 112). What I disagree with is the majority’s apparent conclusion that this presumption gives juries carte blanche in awarding damages for the death of very young or unborn children. I believe that an award of $125,000 for a fetus, none of whose essential characteristics were placed in evidence, is far beyond what the knowledge and experience of rational people would indicate a child’s pecuniary value to its parents to be; thus, I would either remand the case for recomputation of an award or enter a remittitur pursuant to the supervisory authority of this court. The presumption of substantial pecuniary loss is a judicial response to an unavoidable mechanical problem endemic to the wrongful death cause of action — the difficulty of establishing that damages exist. The only damages that were traditionally recoverable under the Wrongful Death Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 70, par. 1 et seq.) were those for the income and services which the deceased would have generated had he lived. Estimating these damages could perhaps be done by considering the health of the deceased, his anticipated future lifespan, the jobs he held, his education or vocational training, economic forecasts, or various other factors that might have a bearing on his earnings and the type and pecuniary value of the services he might have rendered. (See Wilcox v. Bierd (1928), 330 Ill. 571, 580-81, overruled on other grounds by McDaniel v. Bullard (1966), 34 Ill. 2d 487, 494.) Yet the precise amount of these damages would, in the vast majority of cases, be uncertain, and the trier of fact could do no more than speculate as to the proper amount no matter how much evidence was at its disposal. See C. McCormick, Damages sec. 101, at 353 (West 1935). Common sense tells us that, in spite of the speculation that is required to reach such a conclusion, many who die prematurely do possess a significant earning power or capacity to render services to their next of kin at the time of their death. Accordingly the presumption relied on by the majority shifts to the defendant the burden of coming forward with evidence that the damages are minimal or do not exist. Such evidence might rebut the presumption. (See Flynn v. Vancil (1968), 41 Ill. 2d 236, 239-41.) However, the presumption is not evidence in itself but is merely a limited substitute for evidence, a shifting of the burden of proof as to the existence of damages. If unrebutted, the effect of the presumption is at most to insure that damages will be awarded in more than a nominal amount. In assessing the precise amount the trier of fact must be guided by its “ '*** own observation and experience in the affairs of life’ ” (Illinois Pattern Jury Instruction, Civil, No. 1.04 (2d ed. 1971), as quoted in Baird v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Co. (1976), 63 Ill. 2d 463, 473; see City of Chicago v. Scholten (1874), 75 Ill. 468, 471-72; City of Chicago v. Major (1857), 18 Ill. 349, 360). Implicit in this is that, presumption or no presumption, the amount of the award may not be influenced by passion or prejudice but must be within the bounds of ordinary knowledge or experience. To keep it within those bounds, this court has an “obligation to carefully scrutinize the record to determine whether the amount of the verdict is so large as to indicate passion and prejudice” (Lau v. West Towns Bus Co. (1959), 16 Ill. 2d 442, 453) and must, as a necessary corollary, either remand the cause or substitute its own judgment for that of the jury if the record reveals no basis for the verdict it reached. The majority pays lip service to the review which this court is required to undertake and also mentions in dictum that in the absence of evidence as to the amount of damages, the question of damages “perhaps *** could be treated as one of law” (98 Ill. 2d at 491) rather than as one of fact entrusted to the jury. However, it neither undertakes any review of the evidence nor engages in any debate as to whether $125,000 is an unreasonable estimate of pecuniary loss under the circumstances of this case, but merely declines to set an upper or lower limit on an award and states: “ ‘We are not unmindful of our obligation to carefully scrutinize the record to determine whether the amount of the verdict is so large as to indicate passion and prejudice. This we have done, and we conclude from the evidence that although the verdict may well be in excess of the amount which the judges of this court would have allowed if they had heard the evidence and made the original determination, yet we do ot believe that it is so excessive as to show passion or prejudice. ***’ ” 98 Ill. 2d at 492, quoting Lau v. West Towns Bus Co. (1959), 16 Ill. 2d 442, 453. I find it difficult to see how this court can “conclude” anything “from the evidence” when there is no evidence, and I believe it is self-contradictory to treat an issue as one of law, but defer to the jury’s finding concerning it as if there were an issue of fact that had to be resolved. In this case the only evidence relevant to damages that emerged at trial was the defendant’s own testimony that had he performed a timely caesarean section the plaintiff would have had a normal, healthy baby (109 Ill. App. 3d 363, 366-67), and information contained in a doctor’s report that the mother was 19 years old at the death of the fetus, had an llth-grade education and a history of diabetes in her family, was 4 feet 9 inches tall, suffered from obesity, was unmarried and lived with her parents during the pregnancy. Apart from that, the record on which the jury was to base its verdict tells us nothing about the baby’s father or his earning prospects and fails to disclose even the sex of the fetus. Under the circumstances presented in this case, I believe that $125,000 is an unreasonably large amount to award for the wrongful death of a baby none of whose characteristics other than viability are in evidence. Common sense indicates that because children do not ordinarily hold paying jobs until they are teenagers it is unlikely that this child would be able to make any monetary contribution to the family for at least 10 or 15 years. Similarly, children tend to be net consumers rather than donors of goods and personal services until they reach their teens, and the expense of rearing them in the meantime is usually quite substantial. Realistically, the flow of benefits is not likely to reverse direction until the child is well into adolescence. It would be sheer speculation to conclude otherwise on the record in this case. Yet the award that is made for a wrongful death should take account of these factors. (See Rockford, Rock Island & St. Louis R.R. Co. v. Delaney (1876), 82 Ill. 198, 199; C. McCormick, Damages sec. 101, at 352 (West 1935).) Significantly only one of the Illinois cases cited by the parties in this case involved damages comparable to the $125,000 awarded here, in spite of the fact that the plaintiffs in most cases made evidentiary showings relevant to the question of earning capacity. Compare Baird v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Co. (1976), 63 Ill. 2d 463 ($188,000 award for the wrongful death of each of two youths aged 19 and 17 upheld on the basis of detailed evidence concerning their life expectancy, personality, distinguished academic records, anticipated annual earning potential and average interest rates over their projected lifespan) with, e.g., Flynn v. Vancil (1968), 41 Ill. 2d 236 (no damages awarded because the deceased, a two-week-old child, was shown to have had an incurable congenital condition affecting her health); Mattyasovszky v. West Towns Bus Co. (1974), 21 Ill. App. 3d 46, affd (1975), 61 Ill. 2d 31 ($75,000 award for death of 12-year-old boy upheld on a showing that he had regular employment at the time of his death and in addition did all of the household chores for a family of six, cared for the younger children, and did odd jobs for others which earned money); Shanowat v. Checker Taxi Co. (1964), 48 Ill. App. 2d 81 ($10,000 award for death of 11-year-old girl upheld as not excessive); Maca v. Rock Island-Moline City Lines, Inc. (1964), 47 Ill. App. 2d 31 ($30,000 award for death of seven-year-old boy upheld on a showing that he was in good health, was industrious and obedient and well behaved). The plaintiff places great reliance on the Maca case, in which $30,000 was awarded in 1964, as evidence that $125,000 is not excessive today in view of the inflation that has occurred since. Inflation, however, is a two-edged sword in the context of the “value” of an unborn child. Just as such a child will earn more dollars for a given job or service in inflationary times than normally, so also will the services which his family renders him require a higher price in terms of dollars as a result of inflation. I again point out that these services are likely to occupy a considerable part of an infant’s future, whereas older children generally require less in the way of parental care (C. McCormick, Damages sec. 101, at 354 (West 1935)) and in some cases, as in the Mattyasovszky case which I have cited, they may take care of the family rather than vice versa. In addition, dollars that are earned in the future must be “discounted,” or divided by the interest rate over the years intervening between the present and the time of their anticipated accrual as earnings, in order to arrive at the proper amount of an award. (See, e.g., Baird v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Co. (1976), 63 Ill. 2d 463, 467.) If inflation and interest rates remain high, as plaintiff appears to suggest they will, this “discounting” will take a heavy toll of the future monetary earnings of an unborn child, which as I have stated are not likely to begin accruing for many years. Far more troublesome than the question as to whether the award in this case was excessive is the fact that the majority did not decide this difficult question at all but permitted the verdict to stand solely on the basis of the presumption of substantial pecuniary loss. This approach errs in giving the presumption an evidentiary life of its own, as I explained at the outset of this dissent. It also, I fear, fosters distrust of our judicial system. Under the majority’s approach it would not matter whether the award urged for review was $125,000 or $1,250,000: the presumption of substantial loss would sustain it in either case so long as no evidence of the decedent’s inability to earn money or unwillingness to contribute money or services to his next of kin is offered to rebut the presumption. What would be the basis for review if reviewing courts are confined to the evidence in the record and the attitude of the courts is that plaintiffs do not need evidence because they have á presumption working in their favor? What would prevent juries from spending defendant’s money in a blank check fashion? Common sense tells us that it is improper to close the eyes of our appellate court to possible abuses of discretion by the trier of fact: that course would leave the parties to a lawsuit to their fate and would most likely encourage abuses of discretion over the long run. The need for review as a safeguard against such abuses is even greater in cases where a presumption is employed as a substitute for evidence than in cases where there is no presumption to use, even though the sparsity of actual evidence in cases involving a presumption is likely to make the inquiry of whether an award is excessive more difficult. One reason for this is that the factfinder may conclude that the presumption has independent evidentiary value which entitles him to ignore or discount real evidence or reach a conclusion which would otherwise be unsupportable. Another reason is that, without a clear indication that factfinders are being restrained by reviewing courts in their use of presumptions as substitutes for evidence, the public will come to believe that they are ignoring evidence and that the numbers they come up with were arbitrarily pulled out of the air. This perception is one which I believe courts should be concerned about, both as institutions and as guardians of our laws. In Chrisafogeorgis v. Brandenberg (1973), 55 Ill. 2d 368, the case in which this court held that there was a cause of action for the wrongful death of an unborn child, three justices dissented. (Chrisafogeorgis v. Brandenberg the problem of ascertaining the damages in such cases: the majority decided, unlike at least one other court (Carroll v. Skloff (1964), 415 Pa. 47, 49-50, 202 A.2d 9, 11), that this difficulty was not insurmountable and that it therefore should not preclude the creation of the cause of action (Chrisafogeorgis v. Brandenberg (1973), 55 Ill. 2d 368, 371-72). The existence and amount of the pecuniary loss that accompanies the death of a fetus is always highly speculative, however, and heavy reliance will be placed on the presumption of substantial loss in most cases to sustain awards. The majority decision in this case regarding the use of the presumption leads me to conclude that the optimism of the majority in Chrisafogeorgis was unfounded. RYAN, C.J., and UNDERWOOD, J., join in this dissent.