Court Opinion

ID: 9641243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:26:14.449016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:35.980882
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge
(dissenting).
I disagree with the majority’s holdings with respect to the admissibility or sufficiency of the evidence on appellee’s permanent and total disability, and also with respect to the use of a “productivity factor” in calculating appellee’s lost future earnings.
I
Since I am not sure whether the majority holds appellee’s evidence of permanent and total disability (1) inadmissible, (2) insufficient as a basis for the economist’s calculations, or (3) insufficient to prove a prima facie case or to support the verdict, I shall discuss each in turn.
(1)
The majority states that “the fact that the family doctor, who characterized appellee as unemployable by industry as he knew it, accepted this circumstance as the equivalent of total and permanent disability is a legal conclusion rather than medical evidence and one that we cannot accept.” Majority opinion 243 Pa.Super. at 377, at 1274.
The law is clear that a medical doctor, when properly qualified, may offer his opinion that a plaintiff is permanently and totally disabled, and as a result will never be able to secure gainful employment. Cooper v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 323 Pa. 295, 186 A. 125 (1936); Palmer v. Warren State Railway Co., 206 Pa. 574, 56 A. 49 (1903); Woodford v. Equitable Life Assurance Socie*382ty, 149 Pa.Super. 225, 27 A.2d 411 (1942); Harmon v. Knoll, 129 Pa.Super. 390, 195 A. 448 (1938).1
(2)
The majority states that appellee’s family doctor never “testified that appellee was totally and permanently disabled.” Majority opinion 243 Pa.Super. at 376, at 1273, note 2. From this the majority seems to hold inadequate the foundation laid for a hypothetical question posed to the economist, in which he was asked to estimate appellee’s lost future earnings on the assumption of permanent and total disability.
The family doctor’s testimony included the following:
Q. Do you have an opinion within a reasonable degree of certainty, Doctor, based on all of this, within your medical knowledge, as to whether his present condition will improve ?
A. From what I have seen of him from the way he is going medically, I don’t see how he can, he has certainly not improved and I don’t anticipate his improvement.
(R. 201a.)
Q. When did he get this full disability ?
A. I would feel when he was fired in that and can I say why I feel this ?
Q. Yes, because I’m going to ask you about it ?
A. I base this on employment physicals that I do for other companies, for other patients that I have, that I see in the office who are trying to get jobs. As far as I am concerned, on the companies that I do physicals for, we would not hire him. We *383wouldn’t even consider him. Other patients that I see who have disabilities, I also can’t get them jobs. We have sent them to re-hab, we have sent them to therapy, we have just been unsuccessful in getting these people back to work. No one wants to hire them even to the point that I have had people doing telephoning answering jobs at their homes and they have been poor.
(R. 461a.)
Like much oral testimony this is not as clearly said as it might have been; but I think it beyond dispute that the jury could reasonably infer from it that the doctor had concluded that appellee would never be able to secure or to perform work. That possible inference is all that is required as a foundation for a hypothetical question. “[A] party may state specifically the particular facts he believes to be shown by evidence or such facts as the jury would be warranted in finding from the evidence, and ask the opinion of the expert on such facts, assuming them to be true.” Gillman v. Media, 224 Pa. 267, 274, 73 A. 342, 344 (1909) (emphasis added).
(3)
The majority states:
The testimony from which total and permanent disability is assumed rests on the conclusion of a doctor that a man with a neck problem resulting from a whiplash and a weakened right arm and leg was unemployable in the industrial market as presently set up. This was treated by the doctor as the equivalent of a total and permanent disability and so accepted by the trial court.
We cannot agree.
Majority opinion 243 Pa.Super. at 377, at 1273.
First, it is incorrect to say that the court accepted the testimony as the equivalent of permanent and total dis*384ability. The court was not the fact-finder; once it had decided that the evidence offered was sufficient to get the question to the jury, it became the jury’s decision whether appellee was indeed permanently and totally disabled.2 Second, if the majority means that the evidence was not sufficient to get the question to the jury, I disagree. “A plaintiff’s evidence is sufficient to go to a jury when the facts, whether based -on direct or circumstantial evidence, are such that a reasonable jury could conclude that liability should rest with the defendant.” Cox v. Equitable Gas Co., 227 Pa.Super. 153, 155, 324 A.2d 516, 517 (1974). Nor could I agree that the jury’s verdict was against the weight of the evidence. While appellant offered a fair amount of evidence tending to show a lack of objectively measurable disability, that evidence did not, in my view, clearly outweigh appellee’s evidence, which was substantial. “Substantial evidence has been defined as meaning such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.” Erie-Lackawanna Railroad Co. v. Pennsylvania P. U. C., 205 Pa.Super. 291, 294, 208 A.2d 908, 910 (1965). Furthermore, the jury heard and saw appellee and could draw their own conclusions as to whether they believed him when he described the seriousness of his disability. Finally, appellant offered no evidence to prove that appellee was employable. Thus the testimony on this point by appellee’s family doctor was uncontroverted.
II
The majority reasons: that a “productivity factor” is “simply a substitute for inflation,” majority opinion 243 Pa.Super. at 378, at 1274; that an inflation factor is not to be allowed in computing lost future earnings; and *385that therefore the productivity factor is likewise not to be allowed. I believe the first premise of this syllogism is incorrect.3
The economist testified:
What I have taken into account here is the fact of productivity increases in the future, to try and allow for future increases in wages which would come about due to the fact that the economy over a long period of time has had a tendency to exhibit an increase in the propensity to produce goods and services at a faster more efficient rate. Namely, due to better technology. This, over the longrun [sic] is the principal cause or the principal reason why a person’s wages rise; if he can produce twice as much in an hour after learning to do his job better, his employer can afford to pay him more because the employer has more goods that this individual produced that he can now offer for sale and, in fact, in the longrun [sic] in the American economy, productivity has increased or the ability of American workers to produce more goods and services in an hour somewhere around three and a half per cent, therefore, I have allowed the wage increase here approximately of about three and a half percent perannum [sic] for the remaining period of his work-life expectancy.
(R. 425a.)
This testimony suggests two reasons for a steady rise in productivity: “better technology,” and a worker’s “learning to do his job better.” Neither of these is “inflation,” which may be defined as “an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods resulting in *386a substantial and continuing rise in the general price level.” Webster’s Third International Dictionary (1965).4
The reasoning of some of the Pennsylvania cases implies that the use of a productivity factor in computing damages is proper although the factor is not discussed as such. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said in Magill v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 464 F.2d 294 (3d Cir. 1972):
“No Pennsylvania case . . . has been brought to our attention which would forbid the jury from considering future earning power in determining total future earnings prior to reducing them to present worth. To the contrary, Pennsylvania decisional law appears to make future earning power a proper subject for jury consideration when the administrator of the estate has introduced sufficient evidence to lay an adequate foundation for such deliberation.”
Id. at 300.
Our Supreme Court has held that “[t]he measure of a decedent’s loss is what he ‘would have probably earned by his intellectual or bodily labor in his business or profession during the residue of his lifetime.’ ” Smail v. Flock, 407 Pa. 148, 154, 180 A.2d 59, 61 (1962) (citation omitted.)
In my opinion, we should follow the implication of these cases and permit the use of a productivity factor, provided it is adequately supported. What appellee “would have probably earned” is more accurately estimated by including some consideration of increases in his *387income due to productivity factors, than by assuming that his income level would have remained fixed from the date he stopped working until the date of his retirement. To be sure, the estimate of resulting pay increases may be regarded as speculative; but it is even more speculative to assume no pay increases, because such an assumption is unrealistic.
A final comment: Without the productivity factor included in the calculations, appellee’s lost future earnings would have been $156,878 (R. 443a); his lost past earnings were $16,926 (R. 443a); and his past medical bills exceeded $4,900 (appellee’s brief at 30 5 ). On these figures alone, the jury could have awarded appellee $178,714. In fact the verdict was $170,000. Accordingly, if the majority is correct, that the use of the productivity factor was error, the question arises whether the error was so serious as to require a new trial. It seems to me that the majority should respond to appellee’s argument that the error was not that serious.
The judgment should be affirmed.
HOFFMAN and PRICE, JJ., join in this opinion.

. These are old cases, it is true; and one might observe that more sophisticated and informative means of proof are now available — for example, testimony by vocational counselors or industrial employment specialists. That observation, however, does not affect the admissibility of a doctor’s testimony as to disability and employability.

. The court’s charge made it clear to the jury that the expert testimony was not binding on them and that they should themselves decide the extent of appellee’s disability. See R. 654a, 656a-657a, 669a.

. I express no opinion on whether an inflation factor should be taken into consideration by a jury. I note, however, two points: (1) an increasing number of courts have allowed this, see, e. g., Tenore v. Nu Car Carriers, Inc., 67 N.J. 466, 341 A.2d 613 (1975) and cases cited therein; (2) the cases cited by the majority, when read closely, do not strongly support the majority’s conclusion.

. I express no opinion on whether there was an adequate foundation for the economist’s testimony that the productivity factor was 3.5 per cent. He cited no studies, reports, or statistics regarding productivity, nor were any offered in evidence. If the question were correctly presented, I would be inclined to hold the foundation inadequate. Here, however, it is sufficient to note that appellant’s counsel did not object to the foundation, but only to the use of the productivity factor on the ground that it was “inflation” in disguise.

. Neither party has cited a reference to the medical bills on the record, nor does our own research reveal one. In his charge to the jury the judge said: “[W]e have a summary on these bills for you which we’ll send out with you so you don’t have to worry about how much the bills came to.” (R. 652a.) Since appellant appears to admit medical specials of $4,964.38 (see appellant’s brief at 42), I think it fair to adopt the figure of $4,900 in my discussion.