## Facts

- One-year-old Terri Drayton suffered severe chemical burns and permanent disfigurement after being splashed with Liquid-Plumr in a Cleveland boarding house bathroom.
- Terri’s caregiver obtained the product to clear a clogged sink, left the uncapped bottle on the sink after pouring some into the drain, and the child was splashed shortly thereafter.
- In an earlier bench-trial opinion, the court found the manufacturer liable on products-liability theories and awarded damages including amounts for loss of earning capacity and future medical expenses.
- The defendant filed post-trial motions seeking a new trial and amendments to findings and judgment, arguing the economic-damages awards were excessive and unsupported.
- The court held a supplemental evidentiary hearing focused on expert economic testimony about (1) present value of Terri’s lost earning capacity and (2) present value of her lifetime future medical and attendant-care expenses.
- Plaintiffs’ economist projected higher present values using assumptions about inflation, productivity growth, and discounting based on safe long-term investments; defendant’s economist produced markedly lower present values using group earnings data and different discounting and medical-cost assumptions.

## Issues

1. Whether the court’s original awards for loss of earning capacity and future medical expenses were clearly erroneous or unsupported by the evidence.
2. How a court should select a reasonable present-value methodology for a catastrophically injured child’s future earnings loss and future medical expenses when experts dispute inflation, productivity, and discount-rate assumptions.
3. Whether reliance on race-based group earnings averages should control or cap an individualized lost-earning-capacity award.

## Decision

- The court denied the defendant’s motion for a new trial.
- The court denied the defendant’s motion to amend findings of fact and to amend the judgment, except for any minor clarifications not materially affecting the awards.
- The court left substantially intact the previously entered damages for loss of earning capacity and future medical expenses.
- The court credited the factfinder’s authority to weigh competing expert models and to arrive at reasonable dollar figures within the evidentiary range.

## Legal Principles

- In a bench trial, damage findings grounded in the record are reviewed under the clearly erroneous standard; the movant bears the burden to show clear error.
- A factfinder is not required to adopt any expert’s calculations wholesale and may make reasonable approximations supported by the evidence, including mixing assumptions from competing experts.
- Present-value calculation of future losses requires judgment about inflation, productivity/wage growth, and discount rates; courts may account for cost trends specific to the loss claimed, including medical-cost increases.
- Group earnings statistics may be used as data points, but courts need not treat race-based averages as a ceiling on an individual plaintiff’s earning-capacity recovery where that would replicate labor-market discrimination.

## Conclusion

The court denied post-trial relief and upheld its future-damages awards, holding that the amounts were supported by the evidence and that, when experts sharply disagree, the trial judge may weigh methodologies and select reasonable present-value figures within the range established at trial and the supplemental damages hearing.


Drayton v. Jiffee Chem. Corp., 413 F. Supp. 834 (N.D. Ohio 1976)