Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Contract & Bus.) 504.10

Any amount of damages which you award for future damages should be reduced to its present money value and only the present money value of these future damages should be included in your verdict.

The present money value of future damages is the sum of money needed now which, together with what that sum will earn in the future, will compensate (claimant) for these damages as they are actually experienced in future years.

SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES FOR 504.10

1. Designing a standard instruction for reduction of damages to present value is complicated by the fact that there are several different methods used by economists and courts to arrive at a present-value determination. See, e.g., Delta Air Lines, Inc. v. Ageloff, 552 So.2d 1089 (Fla. 1989), and Renuart Lumber Yards v. Levine, 49 So.2d 97 (Fla. 1950) (using approach similar to calculation of cost of annuity); Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. v. Pfeifer, 462 U.S. 523 (1983), and Loftin v. Wilson, 67 So.2d 185 (Fla. 1953) (lost stream of income approach); Beaulieu v. Elliott, 434 P.2d 665 (Alaska 1967) (total offset method); Culver v. Slater Boat Co., 688 F.2d 280 (5th Cir. 1982), and Seaboard Coast Line R.R. v. Garrison, 336 So.2d 423 (Fla. 2d DCA 1976) (discussing real interest rate discount method and inflation/market rate discount methods); and Bould v. Touchette, 349 So.2d 1181 (Fla. 1977) (even without evidence, juries may consider effects of inflation).

2. Until the Supreme Court or the legislature adopts one approach to the exclusion of other methods of calculating present money value, the committee assumes that the present value of future damages is a finding to be made by the jury on the evidence; or, if the parties offer no evidence to control that finding, that the jury properly resorts to its own common knowledge as guided by this instruction and by argument. See Seaboard Coast Line R.R. v. Burdi, 427 So.2d 1048 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983).