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Boudreaux v. State6/10/2005
r lost wages in its sixth assignment of error. The trial court awarded 211 claimants the sum of $2,400.00 each based on 20 missed work days at a rate of $15 per hour. The State argues that the trial court erred in its determination as to the average number of work days missed, average hourly income earned, and the number of claimants entitled to receive such damages. Unlike the stipulations relative to personal property losses and mental anguish damages, the Damages Procedure Order provides that "the Court will determine a period of lost work hours and a rate of compensation for those hours to be applied to all class members who have claimed lost wages," based on evidence provided by the class representatives and the defenses raised by the State. (Emphasis added.) We observe that the Damages Procedure Order did not require that the special master determine an average, but to simply make a determination based on the evidence presented at trial and to award the sum determined to all of the class plaintiffs who made a claim for lost wages.
Based on our review of the testimony and evidence presented by the representative plaintiffs at trial, we cannot say that the trial court erred in the amount awarded. The class plaintiffs, however, allege that the trial court erred in failing to award greater lost wages to Joseph Jones and Richard Morse as two of the wage claim exceptions presented at trial. We agree with the trial court's award limiting Mr. Jones's recovery to the same amount awarded to the lost wage claimants in general. Mr. Jones claimed lost wages of $251,954.00 as result of having lost his job and being unable to secure an equal-paying position until several years later.
Mr. Jones alleged that he was terminated from his job as a pipefitter when he failed to go to work for several days after the flood while trying to find a place for him and his family to live. It was his assertion that but for his having missed work, he would have kept his job making $13.75 an hour; however, on further questioning, Mr. Jones acknowledged that in the mid-to-late 1980s, the construction business had collapsed in Louisiana and several people were laid off, including people who worked at the same company where he had worked in early 1983. Thus, we concur in the trial court's rejection of Mr. Jones's wage claim as speculative and limiting him to the general amount awarded for lost wages.
On the other hand, we do find merit in the class plaintiffs' assertion that the trial court should have awarded Mr. Morse additional lost wages based on the evidence presented. At trial, the class plaintiffs presented the expert medical testimony of doctors Charles R. Genovese, Jr. and M.L.G. Winkler, both accepted by the trial court as experts in internal medicine, and Dr. William D. Gouvier, a clinical psychologist. All three experts agreed and referred to medical studies and articles in support of their opinion that the stress Mr. Morse experienced relative to having to rebuild his home, and the attendant financial pressures stemming there from, more probably than not caused the heart attacks and cardiovascular problems Mr. Morse experienced following the flood.
It was shown that prior to the flood Mr. Morse did not experience any cardiovascular problems, nor did he have a family history of such problems. Mr. Morse experienced his first heart attack in August 1984, a year and a half after the flood, but testified that beginning nine months before his first heart attack, he began experiencing chest pains, which he ignored. Because of the several heart attacks that Mr. Morse experienced following the flood, he was forced to stop working as a pipefitter in 1987, which work he had been performing since 1977
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