Court rebuffs defendants’ challenge of wage loss calculation in Jones Act case

In a recent Jones Act lawsuit filed by an injured seaman, the Court found that the defendant's request that the plaintiff's expert produce a five year earnings history report to calculate wage loss was unduly burdensome. The case is Duplantier v. Bisso Marine Co. Inc. The defendant agreed and the expert was ordered to produce wage reports for only the previous two years. The plaintiff had argued that the information was available and that the defendant could find the transcripts by its own efforts. Earlier, the Court had denied the plaintiff's Motion to Quash a subpoena for the five years of records because he failed to file the objection within the immediate 14 day period after the subpoena was filed. The defense had objected to the expert's submission of just one year of earnings because it was a so called "snapshot" approach to assess damages while in other cases the expert used a "historical approach" to determine damages over a longer period of time.

Source: NavWaters.com