Court Opinion

ID: 9674160
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:24:09.01408+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:25.884504
License: Public Domain

WESTHUES, Judge
(on concurrence in result).
COIL, Commissioner. After examining the motion for rehearing, and after having given the matter further consideration, I have concurred in result only for the reason that I do not agree that the actuary’s expert testimony as to the present cash value of deceased’s total future take-home pay was admissible. I think it was clearly irrelevant and inadmissible for any purpose. The reason seems obvious. The witness was an expert — the only purpose he served was to state the one fact, viz., present cash value of deceased’s total future take-home pay. That was a fact or figure which the jury was not entitled to have before it. It might well have been, under other circumstances, a misleading and prejudicial figure. It was admitted with the trial court’s approval and, indeed, with the trial court’s statement that the figure “would be some evidence of what her loss might be based on.” Now that statement, in my opinion, was not accurate. The present cash value of deceased’s total future take-home pay was not evidence “of what her loss might be based on.” On the contrary, the present cash value of total take-home pay could not have entered into any proper calculation or conclusion the jury might make or reach.
I respectfully suggest that the writer of the principal opinion, holding the expert’s conclusion admissible, has fallen into the error of having failed to distinguish between the admissibility of the facts or elements on which the conclusion was based and the admissibility of the conclusion itself. That is to say, while deceased’s total take-home pay was independently admissible as a starting point for further calculations, and while the earning power (rate) of money was admissible as a separate eviden-tiary item, still the conclusion based on those facts as to the present cash value of deceased’s total future take-home pay was a wholly different thing. It is only that conclusion with which we are presently concerned. We are not concerned with the separate and independently admissible facts from which the inadmissible conclusion was drawn.
I do agree, however, that the circumstances of the present case demonstrate the nonprejudicial effect of the expert testimony. Nevertheless, we should unequali-fiedly hold the expert’s conclusion inadmissible. To hold that testimony admissible in this case is to invite the practice of placing before a jury in F.E.L.A. cases irrelevant, large figures which will, in many, if not in most, instances, be highly prejudicial. The principal opinion outlines and sanctions a future practice which, in my view, cannot logically find support within the basic rules of evidence.
I would, therefore, hold the questioned testimony inadmissible but nonprejudicial in this particular case.