"penalizes defendants because ... interest rates on relatively safe investments will typically ride several percentage points above the rate of inflation"
How later courts described this case
- "penalizes defendants because ... interest rates on relatively safe investments will typically ride several percentage points above the rate of inflation"
- "As evidence becomes available that the next 20 or 30 years will not be like the past 20 or 30 years, then the Feldman [real interest rate] approach is less helpful."
- “In those instances where the substantive law permits a court to award pre-judgment interest, the court must discount the damage figure back to the date of the event, i.e. injury or death, and may award pre-judgment interest for the period between the event and judgment.”
- overruling Johnson v. Penrod Drilling Co., 469 F.2d 897 (5th Cir.1972)
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Overruled on other grounds by Charles D. Gautreaux v. Scurlock Marine, Inc., 107 F.3d 331 (1997)
688 F.2d 280, 288 & 310 (5th Cir.1982), and overruled on other grounds, Gautreaux v. Scurlock Marine, Inc., 107 F.3d 331, 336-37 (5th Cir.1997));
The opinion
GEE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I join in Chief Judge Clark’s dissenting opinion, adding only that the majority ap *315 proach throws open the gates of fairyland, where in future there will be fought mighty battles in the air between experts opining learnedly under oath upon the intrinsically unknowable. Persons unable — as Judge Johnson’s opinion illustrates — to forecast reliably what the inflation (or deflation) rate will be one year ahead will swear to what it will be in forty. It seems especially ironic that we decide future rates of inflation sufficiently susceptible of knowledge to indulge sworn speculation about them today at the very time when it has become possible to believe that shortly they may become insignificant.