Worklife Expectancy and Disability in the Forensic Arena: A Response to Chapter 20 “Worklife Expectancy Models and Concepts” in Rick Robinson’s Foundations of Forensic Vocational Rehabilitation

Here is a middle-aged woman, very overweight, badly scarred on one arm and one leg, unsteady on her feet, in constant and serious pain from the accident, with no education beyond high school and no work skills other than cooking, a job that happens to require standing for long periods which she is incapable of doing. It seems unlikely that someone in this condition could find gainful work at the minimum wage. True, the probability is not zero; and a better procedure, therefore, might have been to subtract from Mrs. O’Shea’s lost future wages as a boat’s cook the wages in some other job, discounted (i.e., multiplied) by the probability-very low-that she would in fact be able to get another job.