Private Law Theory

Ronen Avraham and Kimberly Yuracko, Torts and Discrimination, Law and Economic Research Paper No E570 (2017), available at SSRN. When plaintiffs suffer actionable injury, courts in the United States attempt to repair the harm by awarding compensatory damages that put victims in the position they would have been in but for the wrongs that they have suffered. Courts calculate an individualized measure of compensatory damages for each plaintiff. The damage measure not only includes plaintiff’s actual past expenses, but also, a plaintiff’s lost earning capacity, future pain and suffering, and future medical costs. As a starting point for juries’ projections, courts allow forensic economists to introduce three types of government-generated statistical tables – life expectancy tables, work-life expectancy tables and average-wage tables (P 17). All of these tables come in blended and non-blended versions. The non-blended editions disaggregate data by race and gender … (more)

[Ellen Bublick, JOTWELL, 6 July]

First posted 2017-07-07 14:09:21