Feldman v. Allegheny Airlines, Inc.

• Decision Date: 02 August 1974
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 15670.
• Citation: 382 F. Supp. 1271
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut
• Parties: Reid Laurence FELDMAN, personally and as Administrator of the Estate of Nancy Hollander Feldman, Deceased v. ALLEGHENY AIRLINES, INC.

382 F. Supp. 1271

Reid Laurence FELDMAN, personally and as Administrator of the Estate of Nancy Hollander Feldman, Deceased v. ALLEGHENY AIRLINES, INC.

Civ. No. 15670.

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

August 2, 1974.

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Peter B. Cooper, New Haven, Conn., for plaintiff; John W. Douglas, G. R. Poehner, Washington, D. C., of counsel.

William R. Moller, Hartford, Conn., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

BLUMENFELD, District Judge.

This is a wrongful death action arising under Conn.Gen.Stats. § 52-555 which was brought by the surviving husband as administrator of the estate of Nancy Hollander Feldman,¹ who was killed in the crash of Allegheny Airline's Flight 485 on the morning of June 7, 1971, near New Haven, Connecticut. Allegheny having stipulated to its responsibility for Mrs. Feldman's death, and the plaintiff having reciprocally waived any claim to punitive damages, trial was had to the Court on the issue of damages. Assessment of damages for the death of Mrs. Feldman requires consideration of several factors.

I.

The pattern of the decedent's life was still evolving at the time of her death and must be described in some detail in order to demonstrate the bases for the Court's conclusions as to what course her life would probably have taken in the future.

College Years

Nancy Hollander was reared in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., and entered the University of Pennsylvania as a freshman in 1964. Her grades in college rose steadily from a "C" average as a freshman to "B" and "B+" averages in her upper division years, leaving her with a cumulative "B" average of 2.94 on a scale of "A" = 4. She was the recipient of a Department of Justice scholarship throughout college, and was active in student government. She was also involved in the nether reaches of the federal government for four successive summers during her college years. She began as a secretary for the National Institutes of Health in 1964, and spent the next three summers in the Office of the Solicitor of the Department of Labor, rising from legal secretary to research assistant to budget analyst by the summer of 1967. Shortly after receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature in May of 1968, she married the plaintiff and accompanied him that fall to New Haven, Connecticut, where he commenced studies at the Yale Law School.

Ante-Mortem Employment

Mrs. Feldman's employment in New Haven reflected a continuing interest in and ability to obtain work relating to governmental functions and processes. After some temporary secretarial jobs she secured a position as a research assistant with the New Haven Legal Aid Association. Her principal task there was development of a cost-benefit analysis of the Association's operations. She also performed para-legal research work, such as preparing studies of residents of New Haven neighborhoods when such data was pertinent to litigation being conducted by the Association. The following summer of 1969 she worked for the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission in Washington. In September of 1969 she joined the urban affairs consulting firm of Cogen, Holt & Associates (Cogen, Holt) as a professional associate, and remained in this position until her death.

Cogen, Holt had been formed in 1968 by, among others, Joel Cogen, formerly General Counsel to the New Haven Redevelopment Agency. When the decedent became associated with the firm in 1969, it had a total staff of about ten persons, and has since nearly tripled in size. Clients include Yale-New Haven Hospital, the Yale School of Medicine, private foundations, and public housing and redevelopment authorities. In addition the firm provides complete staff services for the Connecticut Conference of Mayors and Municipalities, an organization representing cities and towns before Congress, the state legislature, and state and federal administrative agencies, acting basically as a lobbyist for municipal interests.

Mrs. Feldman's work with Cogen, Holt involved her principally with the Conference of Mayors. She began as a legislative analyst doing research for other members of the firm, but as she acquired experience she worked more directly with the client and with the targets of the client's lobbying. In the words of Mr. Cogen, who himself serves as Executive Director of the Conference, "there was this thread of research analysis administrative work that gradually increased in the responsibility and, in fact, in exposure to the public. It was in the closing days of her work for us that she had become increasingly involved in highly complex legislation and, in fact, at the very end was working very closely with the legislators, members of the General Assembly, and indeed was doing direct lobbying at the State Capitol in the last days she worked for us."²

Her interest in her work was intense; she worked hard and enthusiastically and genuinely impressed her employers. Mrs. Kathryn Feidelson, another partner in Cogen, Holt who worked with the decedent on projects for the Conference of Mayors, testified that she had "a remarkable degree of analytic ability, a skill in using numbers, statistical analysis. But apart from the intellectual skills she had personal skills which made her able to deal with a wide variety of people, as well as administrative skills, a thorough commitment, a sense of responsibility, a talent for following up projects in which she was working."³

Mr. Clarence Heimann, currently Director of Project Development for the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, was First Selectman for Trumbull, Connecticut, for the twelve years from 1961 to 1973. He was president of the Connecticut Conference of Mayors and Municipalities in 1971 and 1972, and was vice-president of that organization in 1970. In these capacities he dealt directly with the decedent. He was "very much impressed" with her abilities: "I would describe her as being an attractive and intelligent and articulate person; someone who had the ability to order her thoughts and to be able to present them in a fashion that people could readily understand. She had a unique ability, in my opinion, in this area. As a relatively young person she seemed far more mature than her age in her ability to engender thinking and to encourage participation by people who were, in many cases, her superior in age and perhaps station in life."⁴

The circumstances leading to Mrs. Feldman's death are illustrative of her commitment to her work. She and her husband having both grown up in the metropolitan Washington area, they had determined to settle there. She had accordingly arranged to leave Cogen, Holt for what she anticipated would be similar employment in Washington, and had begun exploring opportunities in Washington for employment as a legislative analyst. For instance, she had approached a representative of the United States Conference of Mayors who was attending the annual meeting of the Connecticut Conference of Mayors, and had gained an optimistic impression of her chances of employment with the United States Conference of Mayors. She also had an alternative field of endeavor open to her, since she had applied to and been accepted by the George Washington University Law School for admission in the fall of 1971. Her husband having finished law school, she drove with him and their belongings to Washington on the first weekend in June 1971, as he was about to take the District of Columbia bar examination. But her contribution to Cogen, Holt had become significant enough for her presence there to be required for one last week, notwithstanding her change of residence. In Mr. Cogen's words, "we had three days left in the legislative session and she was handling some very crucial legislation on which she had done the research, analysis, the drafting, and she had close contacts with the key legislators on those bills and we needed her back because it was essential to get those bills passed."⁵ Mrs. Feldman accordingly embarked on Allegheny's morning flight to New Haven on the Monday after the couple's move to Washington.

Ante-Mortem Earnings

The decedent's earnings durng her years in New Haven corroborate her employers' testimony as to her professional competence and her bright prospects for employment and advancement in the Washington millieu. During the approximately nine months she worked for New Haven Legal Assistance, she earned $5,054.62, which reflects an annual rate of approximately $6,700. Her summer job with the EEOC in 1969 earned her $991.71, and various other odd jobs brought her total earnings for the year beginning September 1968 to $6,544.33. Her starting salary in September 1969 at Cogen, Holt was $6,500. Her salary was increased to $7,500 in May 1970, to $9,000 in November 1970, and finally to $10,000 in May 1971. In just 20 months at Cogen, Holt her salary thus rose by 54 per cent. Mr. Cogen stated that had she remained at Cogen, Holt the decedent would have continued to receive annual raises of at least $1,000 per year and possibly substantially more to reflect cost of living increases. For example, the young woman hired to replace Mrs. Feldman began at $10,000 per year but was given an increase to $13,500 about one year later.

II

At the time of her death the decedent had not accepted nor even formally applied for employment in Washington. Her record justifies her apparent confidence that she could easily find suitable employment in Washington once she was finished with her work at Cogen, Holt, her husband was through the bar examination, and they had had a brief vacation. And, of course, her having won admission to law school provided a stimulating and ultimately profitable alternative to immediate continuation of her career as a legislative analyst, should the job market have proved less fertile than she imagined. While predictions as to the precise course her future...