 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Boudreaux v. State6/10/2005
ce the number of claims to be tried.
III. Property Devaluation
This will be tried as a separate item. The parties have agreed to meet in an effort to agree upon presentation, definition of classes of property and other appropriate matters.
Thus, according to the pertinent provisions of the Damages Procedure Order, the special master was to award a percentage of the amounts claimed for personal property losses and repair costs to all class members who submitted an individual claim form and an average amount to the class as a whole as mental anguish (psychological) damages, irrespective of whether a claim for mental anguish was made based on the evidence presented by the 30 representative families. There is no language in the agreement implying or indicating that the special master would be required to examine or evaluate each claim form in order to award the aforementioned relief.
For lost wages, the Damages Procedure Order provides that such damages should only be awarded to those individuals requesting or claiming lost wages, but there is no further proviso requiring the special master to examine the validity or completeness of such claims. Instead, as indicated in the agreement, the onus lay with each party to specify those exceptions that may have been entitled to greater or lesser relief. The State, having failed to fully appreciate the consequences of its agreement, now asks this court to undo that agreement. Our courts are not authorized to do that. It is not the province of the courts to relieve a party of a bad bargain, no matter how harsh. Sunrise Construction and Development Corporation v. Coast Waterworks, Inc., 00-0303, p. 7 (La.App. 1st Cir.6/22/01), 806 So.2d 1, 5, writ denied, 01-2577 (La.1/11/02), 807 So.2d 235.
Nevertheless, based on our review of the evidence in the record before us, we find that only a total of 1,286 individual claim forms were submitted. Hence, we will amend the judgment and the corresponding awards to reflect this number. In all other respects, we reject the arguments made by the State in assignments of error numbers two, three, and four.
In its fifth assignment of error, the State avers that the trial court erred in its award relative to the class plaintiffs' claims for damage to their homes and personal property. By this assignment, the State disputes the valuations given by the class plaintiffs for losses sustained by them. In many instances, the State contends that the class plaintiffs improvidently replaced damaged items rather than attempting to clean or repair the items, such as clothing, appliances, and lawn equipment.
Pursuant to the Damages Procedure Order, the special master was required to:
consider the evidence presented by or on behalf of the family representatives and experts and defenses raised by State to determine a percentage of the amount of claimed damages that may be recovered by all class members who have asserted such claims.... The average percentage from these thirty families will apply to every claim form in the class. (Emphasis added.)
Based on the evidence presented by the thirty representative families, the defenses raised by the State, and the expert testimony, the special master found that the class plaintiffs had undervalued their losses by a factor of .75 percent and, accordingly, applied this factor to the sum total of the amounts listed on the claim forms.
At trial, a majority of the representative plaintiffs testified that they did not have the money to pay others to perform the necessary repair work on their homes, and thus, they performed the labor themselves with the assistance of other family members and
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Louisiana Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|