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
DENECKE, J.,
specially concurring.
I concur in the decision of the majority; however, I do not concur in all of the majority’s statements about pleading and instructing on loss of earnings.
The majority agrees that this ease illustrates the fallacy of the rule perpetuated by the majority in Baxter v. Baker, 253 Or 376 , 451 P2d 456 , 454 P2d 855 (1969);. however, the majority does not adopt the reasoning of the dissent in Baxter v. Baker, supra ( 253 Or at 380 ). My position is as expressed in joining Mr. Chief Justice O’Connell’s dissent in Baxter v. Baker, supra ( 253 Or at 393 ): “* * * [I]f we are going to make new law we should do so along the logical lines suggested in Mr. Justice O’Connell’s opinion.”
The plaintiff may plead to the effect that he or she earned less between the time of injury and trial *70 because of tbe injury and will continue to earn less. This need not be labeled loss of earnings or earning capacity. A specific amount of claimed loss may be pleaded. Such an allegation fulfills the notice function of a pleading.
The trial court should instruct the jury that plaintiff has made this claim and if it finds plaintiff has incurred such a loss it should compensate plaintiff for the same. These losses should not be labeled “special” or “general” damages. The verdict forms should not be segregated into awards for general and special damages,—merely provide a single blank space in which to insert the amount of “damages” to be awarded.