54 S.E. 406 | N.C. | 1906
Plaintiff sued to recover damages of the defendant for negligently causing the death of his intestate. The negligence was admitted, and the only question presented in the record relates to the question of damages. There was no objection to the general rule for the assessment of damages laid down by the court, but the defendant excepted because the court instructed the jury that the Legislature at its last session had provided a table to be used in ascertaining the present value of an annuity. The court read chapter 347, Laws 1905, to the jury, and added: "These methods are submitted to you as a means by which you may calculate the present value of the net income which the intestate would have derived from the labors of his life, if he had not been killed." The court instructed the jury as to the rule of damages laid down in Watson v. R. R.,
In ascertaining by the net income what is a fair and just compensation for the pecuniary injury resulting from the death, under Lord Campbell's Act, as it is called (Revisal, secs. 59 and 60), we are dealing with something not now in possession, but which is to be earned in the future, and therefore it is that this Court has always kept said fact in view when formulating a rule for the assessment of damages in such cases. The terms in which that rule has been framed imply (528) necessarily that the net income will, or at least may, be a changeable quantity, a certain amount in one year and another and quite different amount in the next, as the jury are required by it to consider the capacity of the intestate to earn money, which may increase *417 or decrease owing to his age and other circumstances, and the other elements which enter into the calculation under that rule are also of such a nature as to render the annual income of a series of years variable in amount. The total amount or net accumulated income, upon which the compensation is based, must be ascertained as of the time when, according to his expectancy, the intestate would have died in due course of nature; but this total may be composed of many annual incomes of different amounts. The present value of that sum, whatever it may be, is what the jury should allow in the way of damages.
This Court has not prescribed any "hard and fast rule" by which to bind the jury in making the estimate of what sum should be given or to require them to make the assessment of damages in any particular way. A general rule for the guidance of the jury was suggested inPickett v. R. R.,
There was error in the charge of the court, for which a new trial is awarded on the issue as to damages. The verdict as to the first (530) issue will stand. It is not necessary to consider the other assignments of error, as they become immaterial by our ruling and may not again be presented.
New trial.
Cited: Gerringer v. R. R.,