Household services analysis applied to product liability litigation: methodology, deliverables, and case-specific considerations.
Product liability claims often involve children, homemakers, and retirees whose economic loss is concentrated in household work rather than wages, so the household services valuation is frequently the largest component. The economist draws the pre-injury hours from the household's account and time-use data for a person of the same circumstances, apportions the loss by category using the medical restrictions in the record, prices each category at the local replacement wage, and projects the loss over the period of limitation or the person's expected life. In a mass tort setting the same documented method is applied to each claimant's own household so results are consistent in method and individual in result.
Replacement-cost valuation of the household production an injured or deceased person can no longer provide: meal preparation, cleaning, home and vehicle maintenance, shopping, child care, and care of other household members. The hours are drawn from national time-use data adjusted to the person's household composition and pre-injury role, and each category is priced at the local wage for the occupation that would replace it, then projected and discounted over the period of loss.
The claim consists of lost earnings and earning capacity from the date of injury across the person's expected worklife, lost fringe benefits, the replacement value of household services, and the present value of future care costs documented in a life care plan or treating recommendations. In a fatal injury the components become the survivors' loss of support, household services, and the estate's claim where the framework provides one. In mass tort settings the analysis may also require a consistent methodology applied across many claimants with different ages, occupations, and injuries. The drivers are the earnings and benefit history, the medical and work-capacity opinions, and the care plan.
We issue the final report and provide deposition and trial testimony and rebuttal of opposing household services opinions.
From the hours of household work the person performed, drawn from the household's account and time-use data for retired people of similar circumstances, valued at the cost of replacing those hours with paid services and projected over the person's expected life or the period the injury limits them.
Where the record shows the child performed household work or would have as they grew, the lost hours are valued from the age they would have begun, using time-use data for children and young adults. More often the loss appears as the additional care the household must now provide, which is measured as attendant care rather than as the child's lost services.
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