Compensation for the Loss of Ability to Labor and other Gainful Activities as an Alternative to Loss of Earnings (Income) Compensation for the Victim in Tort Obligations

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the problem of determining compensation for the loss of the ability to labor and other gainful activities as an alternative to loss of earnings (income) compensation. The author draws attention to the legal and doctrinal conditions that ensure the recognition of the ability to gainful work as an independent property of the victim’s personality subject to economic assessment regardless of the actual decrease in the victim’s financial well-being. The paper highlights that the speculative nature of the claim of this kind is greatly exaggerated, since only the indicator of depreciation of the ability to gainful work in various forms has the property of uncertainty, and it is necessary to refer to the category of expected earnings (income) only when it is evaluated as a monetary equivalent. Based on the interpretation of the principles of reasonableness and feasibility, the the author concludes that it is critically important to use traditional calculation parameters (the degree of disability and estimated income) that allow providing an economic assessment of the totality of the lost professionally significant qualities of the victim that he could use in the field of gainful employment in different periods of life in the absence of an event of a wrongful act. The paper justifies that, with respect to certain categories of victims (minors, individual entrepreneurs, etc.), the necessary degree of reliability of such parameters can be achieved by referring to official statistical information or summary indicators prepared on its basis (average age of commencement of employment, indicators of profitability of certain types of economic activity, etc.).