Oregon law has allowed injured employees who are “employed at a fixed wage” to recover their “lost wages” as damages, and Oregon law has allowed an injured victim to recover compensation for the “impairment of [their] earning capacity.”
How later courts described this case
- Oregon law has allowed injured employees who are “employed at a fixed wage” to recover their “lost wages” as damages, and Oregon law has allowed an injured victim to recover compensation for the “impairment of [their] earning capacity.”
- in a personal injury case, evidence required to support a claim for impaired earning capacity need not be “capable of exact monetary computation”; any evidence that “indicate [s] fairly the capacity of the plaintiff to earn money in his usual vocation should be admitted”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
McALLISTEE, J.,
specially concurring.
If one analyzes the majority opinion in this case he finds that it makes no change in the law with regard to the recovery of loss of earnings and of damages for impairment of earning capacity as enunciated in the opinion of the majority in Baxter v. Baker, 253 Or 376 , 451 P2d 456 , 454 P2d 855 (1969). The majority opinion in this case frankly concedes as much. ①
*69 If the opinion in this case serves any purpose, it merely emphasizes what was admittedly held in Baxter, that damages for impairment of earning capacity can be pleaded, proved, and recovered for the period before trial as well as for the period thereafter.
The majority opinion in this case makes no change in the law with regard to the pleading, proof and recovery as special damages of loss of earnings and medical expenses.
Since the majority opinion merely reiterates the holding in Baxter v. Baker, I concur.
“The majority in Baxter appears to accept the proposition . that impairment of earning capacity can be claimed for the period *69 between the injury and trial and is not limited to the period after the trial, as indicated by dictum in Fields v. Fields, supra, and Shaw v. Pacific Supply Coop., supra. Thus, it was held by the majority (at 379) that '•* * [ejvidence of such impairment can be produced during the trial and exploited on argument just as is done with other evidence of losses compensable as general damages. * * We agree. ‡ * *” ' ' ...