Day 35: Torts makes me feel unclean

Yet again Torts II has made the seedy underpinnings of the tort system fun; that in turn makes me feel low and unclean. Case in point, an octogenarian with a litany of ailments is placed in a home after being cared for by his only child full time for 2 years. He dies less than a month later with stage 4 bed sores, cause of death severe dehydration and malnutrition. The question is "how much is his wrongful death worth" because you have to ask the jury to return a number. And my reaction was you can't place a price on your parent's life ... well at least that was my answer for about 10 minutes. At which point I spewed some line of crap about the pain the old boy must have been in, the emotional and physical investment of his care pre-home, and conceded his wrongful death was worth $350K. Afterwards, I was considerably perturbed with myself, not because I had devalued human life with a meaningless number, but because the actual award was $500K and I had asked for too little. <so ashamed!>