Calculating economic damages when death is imminent

Q: In a case where a person is diagnosed with a terminal condition, such as mesothelioma – and who has 12 to 24 months to live at the most. Would you treat this as a personal injury case or a wrongful death case?

[Note: The issue revolves around the fact that in personal injury cases, the economist would need to remove personal consumption from the damages. Personal consumption factors would make the final damages number anywhere from 10 to 40% lower in a PI case than a wrongful death case]

A: Here are some responses from a popular forensic economics list serv:

1. you don't have a choice. He is not dead. What you have is a 'lost years' case, assuming the defendant was the cause of his current condition.
2. Yes. Deduct consumption starting at when the docs say he is likely to die. Or give alternatives based on l. e. of both 12 and 24 months. ( Try to get a doc's opinion on how long he is likely to be able to work, perform household services, etc. If unable to get that, assume conservatively that he will be able to keep going until he dies
3. ....How one defines short is problematic, but the FE need not be concerned with this definition if GIVEN a probability of death within two years. As has been repeated on this list several times, one way to avoid a plaintiff bias in such a case is to run two separate but linked columns on your spreadsheet with a crossover to ascending and descending column for values during life and death in any given year....