Products & Services

Court Testimony From Experts @ BEC

Excerpt from Millott v. Reinhard

Dependency Rates

[266] The expert's disagree on the dependency rate to apply to household services. This rate determines what percentage of the household services performed by Millott needs to be replaced for the family to maintain its former standard of living (i.e., the approach is equivalent to that discussed earlier for income dependency rates). Brown, for the Defendants, assumed a large deduction, while [the plaintiff's expert], for the Plaintiffs, initially made no deduction, later acknowledging that a slight deduction might be appropriate.

[267] Brown assumed that Millott's household services benefited all family members equally. For example, in a four member household, 25 per cent of the benefit of Millott's household services would have been allocated to him, so that, after his death, only the 75 per cent allocated to the rest of the family needed to be replaced (at a split of one-third each among the three remaining family members). In the future, after Steven leaves home, one-third of the benefit of Millott's household services will be allocated to him, so that only two-thirds will need to be replaced (half benefiting Lauretta and half benefiting Samantha). Finally, by the time only Lauretta is left at home, 50 per cent of Millott's household services should be deducted, on the assumption that Millott would have had half the benefit had he lived.

[268] On the other hand, [the plaintiff's expert] made no deduction for dependency in his initial report (Exhibit 45, p.9). That is, he implicitly assumed that all of Millott's household services would need to be replaced. This is qualified in his October 31, 2000 rebuttal report (at p.11), where he stated:

The services to which Ms. Brown applies a reduction include (as described on pages 6 and 7 of Ms. Kirker's report): regular cleaning, seasonal cleaning, outdoor maintenance, and maintenance and repair. Based on our reading of Ms. Kirker's report, we expect that very few of these chores would be dependent on the number of people living in the Millott household. In particular, for Ms. Kirker's 'outdoor maintenance' and 'maintenance and repair' categories, it seems unlikely that any of the work required for these tasks has been reduced due to Mr. Millott's death. Similarly for 'seasonal cleaning' - it seems unlikely that the carpets need to be shampooed less and housed [sic] exterior washed less, simply because Mr. Millott has died. For the 'regular cleaning' activities, it may be that a slight adjustment might be appropriate since, due to Mr. Millott's death, cleaning up after meals should take slightly less time, the house will take slightly longer to get dirty and need cleaning, and so forth. However, Ms. Brown's assumption that only 75 percent of these tasks needs to be replaced (declining to 50 percent once both children are independent) seems extreme. Presumably the Court will seek evidence from a household services expert in resolving this matter. Without further evidence from a household services expert, we believe that our calculations more closely estimate the true household loss than Ms. Brown's. [original emphasis]

[269] Further, in Assessment of Personal Injury Damages at 59, [the plaintiff's expert] states:

It is generally assumed that the survivors will require between 80 and 100 per cent of the value of the deceased's household services. The reason for this is that the consumption of most household services by one member of the family do [sic] not diminish the consumption by other members. All members benefit equally from each such service. Thus, when one member of the family is removed, the amount of services required by the remaining members is not diminished. For example, the amount of benefit which any member of the family derives from having the lawn mowed or the living room painted is not affected by the number of other family members living in the house. When one family member is removed from the household, therefore, the number of household services which are required in order to maintain the standard of living of the remaining family members is not reduced. If the deceased had mowed the lawn once a week, the survivors' standard of living will only be maintained if the lawn continues to be mowed once a week.