Plaintiff is an athlete that was drafted out of college (or even high school) by a major league ball team. He has just finished working his way through the "minors" and was promoted to the major league roster (but has not played a major league game) when he is injured by the defendant, and is hospitalized. It takes $100,000 more to bring the plaintiff back to "normal" than his insurance will cover. Worse, "normal" does not mean restoring his former athletic ability (e.g. a pitcher whose fastball was formerly 100 mph now tops at 70 mph).
There are two types of damages. The first is out of pocket damages, which can be proved by the hospital bills, netted against the insurance payments, or what I call "hard" evidence. The second is the "opportunity" loss of what could have been a lucrative athletic career. Proving the latter might involve taking the comparing the athlete's "pedigree" to that of other, comparable players historically at a similar stage of development, and following their careers forward. In any event, it would involve all kinds of expert testimony and a few speculations, or what I call "soft" evidence.
Assume that there are no evidentiary issues regarding the defendant as the cause of the injury itself, only the value of the injury caused.
I would guess that the "out of pocket" damages would be (relatively) "easy" to prove in court, while the "opportunity loss" of an athletic career would be much harder. To what extent is this true?
