Vaughn v. American Commercial Barge Line, LLC

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
JAMAL VAUGHN 	CIVIL ACTION
VERSUS 	NO. 18-7735
AMERICAN COMMERCIAL
BARGE LINE, LLC
SECTION: “J”(2)
ORDER AND REASONS
This matter is before the Court on remand from the United States Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit affirmed this Court’s
judgment with respect to all issues except for the Court’s determination of Plaintiff’s
future wage loss. Accordingly, on remand, the Court need only resolve this issue, in
addition to settling the parties’ dispute concerning when interest on the judgment for
future lost wages begins to accrue.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
The Court recited the facts of this case in its Findings of Fact and Conclusions
of Law on June 22, 2023 (Rec. Doc. 67), and therefore, will only recount them briefly
here. Defendant, American Commercial Barge Line, LLC (“ACBL”), hired Plaintiff,
Jamal Vaughn, as a Probationary Deckhand in February of 2016. Shortly thereafter
in May of 2016, Vaughn received a promotion to Deckhand, at which time ACBL also
increased Mr. Vaughn’s daily wage rate from $172.00 to $219.80. On January 19,
2018, Mr. Vaughn was working aboard the M/V SAFETY EXPLORER for ACBL when
the vessel allided with another vessel on the Mississippi River. The force from the
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allision caused Mr. Vaughn to be violently thrown around the galley, resulting in
injuries to his head, neck, back, and shoulder. Several physicians treated Mr. Vaughn
for these injuries in the aftermath of the allision, and one of these doctors, Dr. Todd,
did not believe that Mr. Vaughn could return to work as a deckhand and consequently
ordered vocational rehabilitation. At trial, both parties presented reports from
vocational rehabilitation experts, and these reports confirmed that Mr. Vaughn could
no longer perform the physical labor required of a deckhand. Instead, these experts
indicated that after the injury, Mr. Vaughn should limit himself to light to medium
physical labor, which also entailed a substantial diminution in Mr. Vaughn’s future
earning capacity.
Mr. Vaughn brought the instant suit against ACBL on August 15, 2018, to
recover damages for past and future medical expenses, past and future lost wages,
past pain and suffering, and future pain, suffering, and disability. A bench trial was
held in June of 2023, and the Court rendered a judgment in favor of Mr. Vaughn,
assessing his total damages at $1,879,298.00. ACBL appealed the Court’s judgment
concerning Vaughn’s past and future wage losses, and Vaughn appealed the Court’s
denial of punitive damages and attorney’s fees. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the Court’s
judgment except for the damage award for future wage loss, which it vacated and
remanded for reconsideration. The primary instruction the appellate court gave was
that in recalculating Mr. Vaughn’s future lost wages, the Court should apply the steps
outlined in Culver v. Slater Boat Co. (Culver II) and explain its reasoning, with
specific focus on the “evidence that supports the findings at each step.” Vaughn v.
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Am. Com. Barge Line, L.L.C., No. 23-30494, 2025 WL 2945812, at *4 (5th Cir. Oct.
17, 2025).
LEGAL STANDARD
When a plaintiff suffers an injury that negatively affects his earning capacity,
he is entitled to recover for this future loss of earnings. Calculating a plaintiff’s future
lost earnings “involves four steps: estimating the loss of work life resulting from the
injury . . ., calculating the lost income stream, computing the total damage, and
discounting that amount to its present value.” Culver v. Slater Boat Co. (Culver II),
722 F.2d 114, 117 (5th Cir. 1983). In Culver II, the Fifth Circuit explained that the
“paramount concern of a court awarding damages for lost future earnings is to provide
the victim with a sum of money that will, in fact, replace the money that he would
have earned.” Id. at 120. To achieve this goal, the factfinder, usually based on expert
testimony and reports, must account for inflation. Stated another way, the factfinder
must discount the award for future lost wages to its present value, which constitutes
the fourth step in the calculation.
After estimating the number of remaining years in the plaintiff’s work life, the
factfinder must determine what the injured plaintiff would have earned had he not
suffered an injury. To do so, the factfinder should start with the injured plaintiff’s
“gross earnings . . . at the time of injury” Id. at 117. Next, the factfinder must adjust
these gross earnings by adding any fringe benefits to the amount and deducting any
required payments, such as income tax. Id. Once the adjusted gross income that the
plaintiff would have earned but-for the injury is established, the factfinder should
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multiply it by the number of remaining years in the plaintiff’s work life. The result
represents the lost income stream. When the plaintiff will be able to return to work
in some capacity, the wages he is expected to earn for the remaining years of his work
life must be subtracted from the lost income stream. The fourth and final step in the
process involves accounting for inflation, or discounting the future amount to its
present value.
While there are several ways to discount the future damages amount to its
present value, the Fifth Circuit held in Culver II that absent a stipulation by the
parties, the factfinder must use the “below-market discount rate method.” Id. at 122.
Under this method, “the fact-finder does not attempt to predict the wage increases
the particular plaintiff would have received as a result of price inflation,” but instead
“estimates the wage increases the plaintiff would have received each year as a result
of all factors other than inflation.” Id. at 118 (emphasis added). Such factors include
the injured plaintiff’s “personal merit, increased experience and other individual and
societal factors.” Id. at 122. Only when the injured plaintiff presents evidence, beyond
mere speculation, that he would have received yearly wage increases, should these
increases be included when calculating the lost income stream. See id. at 120–21.
Once the total damages are determined, the factfinder must discount the amount by
a below-market discount rate, which “represents the estimated market interest rate,
adjusted for the effect of any income tax, and then offset by the estimated rate of
general future price inflation.” Id. at 118. Perhaps most importantly, a plaintiff
should not be allowed to “‘double-dip’ on his future wage loss claim,” Sanders v. Weeks
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Marine, Inc., No. 23-7317, 2024 WL 4346515, at *7 (E.D. La. Sep. 30, 2024) (Ashe, J.),
which occurs when the factfinder first predicts the plaintiff’s yearly wage increases
based on inflation and then also uses the below-market discount rate, thereby
enabling the projected effects of inflation to benefit the plaintiff twice.
DISCUSSION
In the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law after the bench trial (Rec. Doc.
67), the Court based its award for future wage loss on an extrapolation of the numbers
calculated by both Plaintiff’s and Defendant’s economic experts. On appeal, the Fifth
Circuit concluded that the Court did not explain its reasoning “with sufficient
particularity to allow [the appellate court] to determine rather than speculate that
the law has been correctly applied.” Vaughn, 2025 WL 2945812, at *3 (citation
omitted). Furthermore, Defendant objected to Plaintiff’s expert’s estimated future
wage loss because, according to Defendant, Mr. Vaughn’s expert allowed “Plaintiff to
‘double-dip’ because he utilize[d] both the below-market-discount method and also
increase[d] the base wage rate for inflation.” (Rec. Doc. 37-1, at 1). More specifically,
Shael Wolfson, Ph.D., presumably looked at the large yearly increases that Plaintiff
had received between 2015 and 2017 and estimated that his annual salary would
continue to increase at 3.7% per year, citing the Employment Cost Index for this
particular percentage. Defendant contends that the Employment Cost Index itself
measures the inflation of labor costs. Moreover, Defendant argues that Plaintiff did
not present evidence to suggest that his wages would continue to increase, as they
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had 	between 	2015 	and 	2017, 	for 	any 	reason 	other 	than 	inflation. 	Therefore,
Defendant argued that Wolfson’s report did not comply with Culver II.
Based on the wage increases Mr. Vaughn received between 2016 and the time
of the accident in early 2018, the Court firmly believes that his yearly wages with
ACBL would have continued to increase had he not suffered an injury. However,
Plaintiff did not present any evidence or proof that his annual salary would continue
to increase for any reasons other than inflation. Therefore, the Court will assume that
Mr. Vaughn’s salary at ACBL would have remained the same through the end of his
work life. Accordingly, the discussion and calculations below address the concerns not
only of the Fifth Circuit, but also of Defendant.
The first step under Culver II is to estimate the loss of work life resulting from
the plaintiff’s injury. Mr. Vaughn’s economic expert, Wolfson, estimated Plaintiff’s
remaining work life at 33.04 years, while Kenneth Boudreaux, Ph.D., Defendant’s
economic expert, provided an estimate of 26.08 years. These numbers are close to
each other, but because Plaintiff was only 27 at the time of trial (or the “reference
date” used in the experts’ reports), the Court concludes that it is much more realistic
and likely that Plaintiff will work for 33 more years until he is 60, as Plaintiff’s expert
estimated, as opposed to leaving the workforce in his early 50s as Defendant’s expert
projected. Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiff had a remaining work life of
33.04 years when this matter was tried in 2023.
Next, the Court must calculate the lost income stream, which “begins with the
gross earnings of the injured party at the time of injury.” Culver II, 722 F.2d at 117.
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Then, the factfinder should add “other income incidental to work, such as fringe
benefits,” to the base number before subtracting expenses like income tax.1 Id. At the
time of his injury, Plaintiff earned a gross annual salary of $56,328.85, the number
which both economic experts used in their reports.
The Court next looks to the parties’ vocational rehabilitation experts’ reports
to determine the type of employment and salary Mr. Vaughn can expect to receive in
the future, based on his decreased physical capability since the injury, in addition to
“his age, education, past work history, transferable skills, vocational test results, and
physical capabilities as outlined in the records.” (Rec. Doc. 66-35, at 16). Plaintiff’s
vocational expert, Aaron Wolfson, Ph.D., presented five alternate occupations, along
with their physical strength demands and information about annual wages, for which
Mr. Vaughn might qualify. Across all five occupations, the starting salaries ranged
from $17,530.00 to $29,530.00. Plaintiff’s vocational expert explained that “Mr.
Vaughn would likely earn closer to the starting wage ranges in alternate occupations,
and with time and experience, he can increase his earnings.” Id.
Similarly, Defendant’s expert, Nancy Favaloro, presented six alternate jobs
that would be compatible with Mr. Vaughn’s “vocational profile . . . and the work
restrictions as set forth in the Functional Capacity Evaluation dated December 8,
2021.” (Rec. Doc. 66-38, at 8). For the most part, both experts arrived at similar salary
1 In recalculating the award for future lost wages, the Court decided to base its calculations
primarily on Boudreaux’s report, so the Court has not undertaken the step of adding fringe benefits
or deducting expenses from Mr. Vaughn’s gross salary because Boudreaux presumably already
accounted for these factors.
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ranges that Mr. Vaughn might earn in the future. Boudreaux, Defendant’s economic
expert, calculated Vaughn’s future lost income based on three different salaries:
$28,733.12 per annum, $37,686.67, and $48,086.72 per annum, all based on averages
drawn from Favaloro’s April 26, 2023 report. The Court decided to use $28,733.12 as
Mr. Vaughn’s estimated future salary, in part because this number is more in line
with the estimates presented by Plaintiff’s expert, but also because the Court finds
this number more reasonable based on Mr. Vaughn’s post-injury capacity for physical
labor, in addition to his age, education, and work experience. The Court has included
an explanation of its calculations below.
Under Culver II, the fourth step involves applying a below-market discount
rate to the estimated amount of damages to account for inflation, or to reduce the
amount to its present value. At the time of trial, Plaintiff’s expert used a 1.1%
discount rate, while Boudreaux used a range between 0.00% and 2.60%. Furthermore,
Boudreaux explained that he derived this range “from the returns currently [in 2023]
available in risk-free investments (U.S. Treasury ‘Inflation Indexed Bonds’) that can
readily duplicate the lost amounts across time,” (Rec. Doc. 66-41, at 5), which is what
Culver II recommends. Therefore, the Court will take the midpoint of Boudreaux’s
range—1.3% (which is also close to Wolfson’s discount rate)—as the appropriate
discount rate to account for inflation.
Boudreaux estimated that if Mr. Vaughn were to earn a net salary of
$28,733.12 per annum for 26.08 years, he would suffer a diminution of future
earnings in the amount of $450,836.82. This midpoint number that Boudreaux
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provided represents a model whereby Mr. Vaughn’s future salary would neither
increase nor decrease each year, and of course, the total represents the present value
of the future damages based on a 1.3% below-market discount rate. The only
difference between Boudreaux’s calculation and the Court’s finding concerns the
remaining years in Mr. Vaughn’s work life. Boudreaux estimated that Mr. Vaughn
would work for only 26.08 more years, whereas the Court finds Wolfson’s estimate of
33.04 years more reasonable. When the Court takes Boudreaux’s calculation as the
starting point and adds seven more years’ worth of estimated lost income, discounted
to present value, the total comes to roughly $600,000. Accordingly, the Court will
reduce its prior award of $750,000 in lost future earnings to $600,000.
Next, Defendant contends that under Fifth Circuit precedent, “when a case is
remanded for recalculation or reconsideration of damages and the appellate mandate
is silent on interest, interest on any award accrues from the date of the second
judgment—not the original judgment.” (Rec. Doc. 91, at 1). Conversely, Plaintiff
argues that if post-judgment interest began to accrue only after the second judgment,
that would be tantamount to allowing Defendant to “receive the benefit of using
plaintiff’s money for two years after the district court concluded that defendant was
liable to him.” (Rec. Doc. 90, at 1). Because the Fifth Circuit affirmed the Court’s
judgment in all respects except for the amount of future lost wages, the only issue to
be resolved is when the interest on the future lost wages begins to accrue. The interest
on the remainder of the judgment began to accrue on the date of the initial judgment.
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In this case, federal law governs “the award of postjudgment interest, including
decisions about when postjudgment interest begins to accrue.” ExxonMobil Corp. v.
Elec. Reliability Servs., Inc., 868 F.3d 408, 419 (5th Cir. 2017). The relevant statute,
28 U.S.C. § 1961(a) provides that “[s]uch interest shall be calculated from the date of
the entry of the judgment.” 28 U.S.C. § 1961(a). This rule is less straightforward when
there are multiple judgments in a single case, as happens when a party appeals a
district court’s decision and the appellate court remands for further proceedings.
Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure Rule 37 outlines when interest should begin to
accrue in a case that has been appealed under two circumstances: when the appellate
court affirms the lower court’s judgment and when the appellate court reverses, Fed.
R. App. P. 37, but what constitutes a reversal or modification is not always clear.
In addressing this issue, the Fifth Circuit has stated that when “the original
judgment is substantially affirmed by this court on appeal, . . . [federal post-
judgment] interest properly accrues from the date of the initial judgment because
that 	is 	the 	date 	on 	which 	the 	correct 	judgment 	should 	have 	been 	entered.”
ExxonMobil Corp., 868 F.3d at 419–20 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting
Brooks v. United States, 757 F.2d 734, 740, 741 (5th Cir. 1985)). Defendant cites to
Vickers v. Chiles Drilling Co. and Masinter v. Tenneco Oil Co., 929 F.2d 191 (5 th Cir.
1991) (what Defendant refers to as Masinter I but is actually Masinter II), to support
what it calls the Fifth Circuit’s “clear rule” that post-judgment interest begins to
accrue from the date of the second judgment when an appellate court remands the
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case 	but 	remains 	silent 	on 	the 	issue 	of 	interest. 	Both 	of 	these 	cases 	are
distinguishable from the instant matter, however.
First, the Fifth Circuit heard two appeals in Vickers, one of them after the case
had been remanded to the district court. Vickers v. Chiles Drilling Co. (Vickers I), 822
F.2d 535 (5th Cir. 1987); Vickers v. Chiles Drilling Co. (Vickers II), 882 F.2d 158 (5th
Cir. 1989). In the second appeal, the court held that when “an appellate court reverses
or modifies a judgment with a direction that a judgment be entered against a party,
the mandate from the appellate court must specifically order that interest run from
the date of the first judgment, else interest runs from the date of the second, modified
judgment.” Vickers II, 882 F.2d at 159 (citing Fed. R. App. P. 37). The court’s
language, derived from Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 37, makes it clear that
this rule about interest applies only when an appellate court does one of two things:
(1) reverses a judgment, or (2) modifies a judgment while also directing that a
judgment be entered against a party. In other words, the rule that post-judgment
interest runs from the date of the second judgment unless the appellate court
specifies otherwise applies when the appellate court reverses or modifies the district
court’s judgment substantively.
On first appeal, the Vickers court did just that; it reversed the lower court’s
ruling concerning whether a design defect existed and remanded the case with the
mandate 	that 	the 	district 	court 	redetermine 	causation 	based 	on 	the 	rules 	of
comparative fault in admiralty cases. Vickers I, 822 F.2d at 540–41. The appeals court
also directed the trial court to award any damages for mental anguish which Vickers’s
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injury had proximately caused. Id. at 541. These appellate rulings were substantive
and went to the merits of the case. In the instant case, on the other hand, the Fifth
Circuit substantially affirmed the Court’s earlier judgment and remanded for a
recalculation of future lost wages only. Unlike the court in Vickers, the Fifth Circuit
here did not reverse any of the Court’s findings, nor did it direct the Court to award
damages that it had not previously awarded.
Defendant’s reliance on Masinter II is similarly misplaced, as is Plaintiff’s
reliance on Masinter III. The Fifth Circuit heard appeals in Masinter v. Tenneco Oil
Co. on four separate occasions. In Masinter II, the Fifth Circuit held that “without an
order that interest on the future lost wages runs from the date of the first judgment,
it should have run from the date of the second judgment.” Masinter v. Tenneco Oil
Co., 929 F.2d 191, 195 (5th Cir. 1991) (citation omitted). In a subsequent rehearing,
the Fifth Circuit reversed the earlier decision and mandated that the district court
should “award interest on the award of future lost wages from the date of the first
judgment.” Masinter v. Tenneco Oil Co., 934 F.2d 67, 68 (5th Cir. 1991). Subsequently,
however, the court reinstated its prior opinion and remanded the issue of post-
judgment 	interest 	on 	Masinter’s 	future 	lost 	wages 	for 	the 	district 	court’s
consideration. Masinter v. Marlin Drilling Co., Inc., 938 F.2d 536 (5th Cir. 1991).
On remand, the district court held that the post-judgment interest on the
future lost wage award began to accrue on the date of the first judgment, which
undermines Defendant’s argument. Masinter v. Tenneco Oil Co., No. 85-1919, 1991
WL 197154, at *1 (E.D. La. Sep. 11, 1991). Also importantly, Masinter’s procedural
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posture differed significantly from the instant case. The Fifth Circuit had initially
given Masinter the choice of remittitur or a new trial, and Masinter chose a new trial.
In the Fifth Circuit opinion cited by Plaintiff, the court said, “Had Masinter chosen
to accept the remittitur, he would have received interest from the date of the
judgment in the first trial.” Masinter, 934 F.2d at 68. In other words, the fact that
Masinter chose a new trial determined when post-judgment interest on the award for
future lost wages began to accrue. The court explained that a remittitur, which is
similar to remanding a case for the district court to recalculate only part of an award
(as here), would not affect when post-judgment interest began to accrue.
In a more recent case, ExxonMobil Corp. v. Electrical Reliability Services, Inc.,
Exxon argued that the Fifth Circuit had “applied post-judgment interest from the
date of the original judgment only in cases in which remand was for recalculation of
damages or other, minor changes, whereas the instant case required the district court
to conduct a substantive analysis of its prior findings in light of intervening law.” 868
F.3d 408, 420 (5th Cir. 2017). In responding to this argument, the Fifth Circuit
clarified that to determine whether post-judgment interest should accrue from the
date of the initial judgment or the date of the judgment on remand, “the primary
consideration is the degree to which the original judgment is ultimately upheld or
invalidated, not the characterization of the district court's labors on remand.” Id. The
Court held that interest in that case began to accrue from the date of the initial
judgment and strongly suggested that generally, unless the appellate court found the
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“judgment lacking in evidentiary or legal support,” post-judgment interest on awards
for future lost wages should begin to accrue on the date of the first judgment. Id.
CONCLUSION
Accordingly,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Court’s prior award to Plaintiff of
$750,000 in future lost wages shall be reduced to $600,000.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that post-judgment interest on the amended
award of $600,000 began to accrue on the date of the first judgment, which was June
22, 2023.
New Orleans, Louisiana, this 17th day of March, 2026.
____________________________________
CARL J. BARBIER
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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