By: DON C. KEENAN
When I was a puppy lawyer, one of the tipping points at which I felt that I was a sure enough trial lawyer was the time that I got the court to take judicial notice of the Georgia Life Annuity tables.
The author as a puppy lawyer
With the sound of the gavel, the court validated the life expectancy in my case to the jury. My mama was in the courtroom—my last remaining living family member—and she was beaming. I felt like I'd won the case.
Today, if I admitted the statutory life tables (or even work expectancy tables), in my opinion, I would have committed malpractice. I would have just shortchanged my client's recovery by fifteen, maybe twenty years.
While I don't often talk about how Codes are obtained, the life expectancy Code was so easy that I'll give you a bird's-eye. First—you Google life expectancy (or somebody else does) and you look at the first 20 pages and simply pull out any of the blurbs that give a numerical end date. You then go under ‘News’ and see what the professional media, life insurance companies, the annuity people are saying about life expectancy.
Though Codes and virtually every topic are much more extensive than I outlined above (seven steps often take a full day and don't resemble in any regard the type of focus groups that lawyers have become accustomed to), when we were researching them, Google and the ‘News’ were so telling that we then proceeded to do the "expectation" focus group:
“Ladies and gentlemen, assuming that you have good quality of life—that is you can walk, talk, have your mental faculties intact, and are not in pain—how old do you expect to live?"
—In your own focus groups, you can also tell your subjects that they can use their family as a go-by, or use articles they've read or anything they care to consider to answer the question.—
Then we had everybody write the number on a piece of paper with their name on it and had each person sign theirs. (This technique is always used when you believe that some of the early answers will taint and change the late responses.)
After all of the predicted ages had been written and passed to the front, we did a real quick eyeball to see if there was a bell curve—that is: some on the low side, some on the high side, and then everybody else in the middle; or it was a “pack” number—that is: everybody's virtually the same.
Obviously, this type of focus group takes all of about 15 minutes, and afterwards you can go on to other issues or cases depending upon what's on your agenda.
In the seven or eight life expectancy focus groups that I have been involved in, the general "pack" number was 90. The bell curve came out at roughly 90 because, on one end, you have those who said 100 and, then, on the other end, a few who said 75.
These results are interesting, but predictable if you know the Reptile©. If you ask someone: "you said 90 but, now, could it also be greater than 90 or less than 90?"—Most folks would say greater than 90, but not less.
STOP RIGHT NOW:
Ponder to yourself: why such optimistic numbers? And why does it blow the leaf off the tables? Stop now and think about it, and when you get an answer come back and read further.
Well, I hope you got the right answer, because it is pure Reptile©—Bubba wants, needs, and believes he deserves to live a long life. That's pure Reptilian survival. So, once again, the Reptile© imprint comes screaming at you.
At the Keenan Ball College, the faculty of the voir dire course teach you exactly how to imbed the life expectancy question into jury selection. Isn't it obvious that, if you got a poll of jurors who all hovered around an expectation to live 90 years or more, that they are going to be very accepting of your economist and your argument that your client deserves the same life expectancy? During voir dire it takes maybe 5 minutes.
Some of you are saying: “Papa Don, are you just running these in the South?” Well, we first learned nearly nine years ago that true Reptilian imprints are independent of demography—they're the same in Tacoma, Washington as they are in Albuquerque, New Mexico as they are in Summersville, Virginia, and so on…
Beliefs on life expectancy are no different. We've done focus groups to support this in five or six states so far.
So, what does this mean for trial? Well, I tell my economist that if they're going to use the tables and give me a 70 year life expectancy then I will take out a gun and shoot them graveyard-dead on the spot. I simply ask the economist to investigate life expectancy in the same way we went about getting the Code for it, except minus the focus group.
There are tons of articles, studies and major media that make out a 90-year expectation to be shortchanging the plaintiff. Please recall the 23 February 2015 TIME Magazine cover that carried the photo of this gigantic, plump, white baby with the heading "THIS BABY COULD LIVE TO BE 142 YEARS OLD".
Even if Bubba didn't read the story or buy the magazine, he’s for sure going to have seen that title and he’s going to have seen all of the media that USA Today has generated and all the morning talk shows that follow after those print stories. It's a tsunami of expanded life expectancy.
Try to get your economist to reference the stuff that Bubba may have seen:
"Well, as reported by Time Magazine, you may recall that the one with the plump little white baby on the front claims current research indicates that in the next number of years, people may live to be 142-years-old."
If your economist says that, not everyone but some on that jury are going to be hit with a light bulb—they are going to recall it and then they are going to appear smarter than the rest of the jury by telling the others that they saw it.
WORK LIFE EXPECTANCY
Now, let's turn to the curve for work life expectancy—this saddens me. My grandfather who raised me, along with my mother and grandmother, after my father died when I was a year-and-a-half-old, looked forward all his life to retirement. He worked very, very hard, only to die a month and a half after he retired. I still choke up at the thought.
But the Code for work life expectancy will make everybody choke up, because the Code is "I'll never retire"—and the simple elements of that Code are no pension, no equity, no savings account, tons of living expenses. All of these elements equate to the fact that the 99% in this country can never retire. So, once again, I've got the economist that's going to use a work life expectancy of 62 and, once again, my Smith & Wesson Silver 38 Special with hollow-point bullets will kill that economist graveyard-dead. The shortened calculation cheats my clients, and I can never let anybody cheat my client—particularly somebody I'm paying to be my witness.
Now, there's plenty of data out there that talks about the inevitability of no retirement for the 99%. In fact, what the data does show is that a sizeable number of folk will be laid off or fired before they reach company retirement, and the replacement job that they will have to get will pay just a fraction of what they made before. Haven't you noticed a lot of grandparents slinging burgers at McDonalds? Grandparents who are janitors and maids in hospitals and hotels? You think those folk enjoy it or do you think their very existences depend on those meager McDonalds paychecks?
Focus groups have proved time and time again that Bubba don't think he's ever going to retire. Just five minutes or so during voir dire will completely support your argument for this.
Now, during voir dire you may want to go beyond what they quote to be their life expectancy and ask the members of the jury to answer, “Who’s the oldest person you know? How long has the oldest person in your family lived?” I love the anecdotal stories that’ll come out, where they talk about Uncle Harry mowing the grass at 97.
You see, my fellow woodpeckers, something as important as life is emotional, not logical, and tables ain't got nothing to do with it.
BOTTOM LINE: There's a new day for life expectancy and work life expectancy—and it's all pure Reptile©.