Stoke­ley Smart is mak­ing waves as a T&T ac­tu­ary, with his work be­ing cit­ed in the fore­most ac­tu­ar­i­al jour­nals and be­ing in­vit­ed to present on The Smart Ta­bles at con­fer­ences.

Smart is the di­rec­tor of the ac­tu­ar­i­al sci­ence pro­gramme at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Last Thurs­day, Smart and mem­bers of his team, in­clud­ing ac­tu­ary Kyle Rud­den and Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo, launched The Smart Ta­bles, at the Of­fice of the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus prin­ci­pal.

Smart de­scribes The Smart Ta­bles as a frame­work that makes it eas­i­er for lawyers and judges to ar­rive at ac­cu­rate as­sess­ments in loss of earn­ings cas­es due to per­son­al in­jury or death.

He spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian af­ter the of­fi­cial launch of The Smart Ta­bles

Q: Ex­plain to me in terms that the man in the street can un­der­stand, what is the pur­pose of The Smart Ta­bles?

A: Say you had some­one who’s a car­diac sur­geon. They’re 40 years old, they get in­to a car ac­ci­dent. And as a re­sult of the car ac­ci­dent, a drunk dri­ver hits them, they lose the use of their arms.

So there­fore, they can’t per­form car­diac surgery any­more. And the in­sur­ance, as­sum­ing that the drunk dri­ver had in­sur­ance, will look to pay the lump sum pay­ment to com­pen­sate the per­son for their loss of earn­ings in the im­pend­ing civ­il law­suit in the courts. The courts, and in par­tic­u­lar the judges and the mas­ters, have to come up with what that lump sum pay­ment should be.

So let’s say, for ex­am­ple, the sur­geon was mak­ing, I don’t know, $100,000 a month, which is $1.2 mil­lion. They’re 40 years old. You’re go­ing to as­sume an age by which they’re go­ing to re­tire. So you have an as­sump­tion for that. Let’s say it’s 60 years. So it’s $1.2 mil­lion a year by 20 years, from 40 to 60, that’s 20 years of earn­ings, or $24 mil­lion. It’ll be less than that be­cause you have to fac­tor in the pos­si­bil­i­ty the per­son could die be­fore the age of 60.

The lump sum pay­ment as­sumes that it’s go­ing to be in­vest­ed and the mon­ey is used and pro­ceeds are meant to repli­cate the pay­ments.

So you have to as­sume an in­ter­est rate. Any­way, pri­or to launch on De­cem­ber 4, judges and mas­ters had to come up with that num­ber. That’s an ex­ceed­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed num­ber to come up with. It was quite ar­bi­trary be­cause there was no sci­en­tif­ic method­ol­o­gy that was be­ing fol­lowed. A judge would just come up with it and at the high court lev­el, they might be ap­pealed.

The num­ber that the court of ap­peal comes up with could be com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. So the in­ter­est rate num­ber was ar­bi­trary and in­con­sis­tent. And, in par­tic­u­lar, peo­ple who were so­cioe­co­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged at the low end of the so­cioe­co­nom­ic lad­der, were more like­ly to get awards that were de­fi­cient, as it were.

This method­ol­o­gy now takes away the ar­bi­trari­ness and has a sci­en­tif­ic trail of prin­ci­ples that are be­ing ap­plied to cal­cu­late that lump sum pay­ment.

Q: So, so let me ask you a re­al world ques­tion. Can The Smart Ta­bles be used to cal­cu­late sums owed to the fam­i­lies of the peo­ple who died in what is called the Paria Div­ing Tragedy in Feb­ru­ary 2022?

A: For sure it could. It can be used for those folks. But it can be used for any­one where they have lost their earn­ings due to per­son­al in­jury or death, and they’re en­ti­tled to get com­pen­sat­ed as such. Yes, of course it can.

Q: And there was a gen­tle­man who was work­ing for a con­trac­tor to Her­itage who went miss­ing last year and has nev­er been found.

There was a news sto­ry a few days ago with his fam­i­ly want­i­ng to know what’s go­ing on?

A: The courts can de­ter­mine if the fam­i­ly or the es­tate of that in­di­vid­ual are en­ti­tled to a pay­ment due to the loss of earn­ings.

The Smart Ta­bles peo­ple can cal­cu­late that. But I want to be clear that I am not aware of the de­tails in that mat­ter and I do not know whether the com­pa­ny is li­able to pay the in­di­vid­ual in that case. But if they are, The Smart Ta­bles can ab­solute­ly be used to cal­cu­late what that lump sum pay­ment should be.

Q: So The Smart Ta­bles are re­al­ly an aid for lawyers and judges and mas­ters?

A: And claimants as well. Be­cause right now, I de­scribe it as there is a sort of a bran tub ap­proach to these awards. It’s just sort of the pick­ing num­bers out of a box filled with or­ders and awards. There is no sci­en­tif­ic method­ol­o­gy to it. The judges don’t have a con­cept of mor­tal­i­ty.

So The Smart Ta­bles us­es the mor­tal­i­ty ta­bles that I had to cre­ate, which didn’t ex­ist be­fore. That’s a very im­por­tant part of in­put in­to The Smart Ta­bles frame­work.

There are oth­er mov­ing parts of the projects that are go­ing on in par­al­lel that had to be com­plet­ed in or­der for the frame­work to work be­cause the frame­work us­es in­dige­nous in­puts.

Q: Do oth­er judges, at­tor­neys and claimants in the Com­mon­wealth re­gion have ac­cess to The Smart Ta­bles or a sim­i­lar ser­vice? In oth­er words, is some­thing sim­i­lar to what you and your team have pro­duced avail­able else­where?

A: Sim­i­lar type ta­bles are avail­able in more ad­vanced Com­mon­wealth coun­tries. So, for in­stance, in the in Britain, they have the Og­den Ta­bles, but that is spe­cif­ic to Britain. Cana­di­ans will have some ver­sion. Aus­tralia, New Zealand, those sorts of coun­tries which are part of the Com­mon­wealth do have method­olo­gies. But for de­vel­op­ing na­tions that are com­mon law ju­ris­dic­tions, such as in the re­gion, there is noth­ing spe­cif­ic.

The Smart Ta­bles was de­signed so that it can be eas­i­ly adapt­ed to com­mon law ju­ris­dic­tions that do not have a sci­en­tif­ic frame­work and eas­i­ly adapt­ed to turn it out. T&T is just the first ju­ris­dic­tion in which it has been rolled out. We have a meet­ing next month with the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice. The pres­i­dent of the CCJ was in at­ten­dance at our event and they are very in­ter­est­ed in rolling out the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice ver­sion, adopt­ed to na­tions un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the CCJ, some­time next year

Q: And what about the lo­cal ju­di­cia­ry? Is the lo­cal ju­di­cia­ry in­ter­est­ed in us­ing The Smart Ta­bles?

A: Very much so. That’s why one of these peo­ple speak­ing at the launch was the vice chair of the Ju­di­cial Ed­u­ca­tion In­sti­tute of T&T.

Last year in Ju­ly we did a pre­sen­ta­tion to the JEI at their of­fices by the Hy­att. And there were com­ments made by the then CJ, Ivor Archie, re­gard­ing its im­por­tance. And that’s one of the things that start­ed off our pre­sen­ta­tion with a quote from him in re­gard to how the courts of the Trinida­di­an courts are very, very in­ter­est­ed and have been sup­port­ive of us hav­ing this thing rolled out.