Fell v. Union Pacific Railway Co

In Fell v. Union Pacific Railway Co, 32 Utah 101, 88 P. 1003, 1007 (Utah 1907), the Court stated: The true test to be applied as to whether interest should be allowed before judgment in a given case or not is, therefore, not whether the damages are unliquidated or otherwise, but whether the injury and consequent damages are complete and must be ascertained as of a particular time and in accordance with fixed rules of evidence and known standards of value, which the court or jury must follow in fixing the amount, rather than be guided by their best judgment in assessing the amount to be allowed for past as well as for future injury, or for elements that cannot be measured by any fixed standards of value.88 P. at 1007. Thus, we do not require that damages necessarily be liquidated, but we deny awards of prejudgment interest in cases where damage amounts are to be determined by the broad discretion of the jury. "In all personal injury cases, cases of death by wrongful act, libel, slander, false imprisonment . . . and all cases where the damages are incomplete and are peculiarly within the province of the jury to assess at the time of the trial, no interest is permissible." Id. at 1006.