There had been a collision at sea in which the defendant’s vessel caused damage to HMS Cairo. The House was asked to assess damages after damage to the plaintiff’s vessel, and whether in the case of a warship the registrar had been entitled to award by way of general damages interest on the capital value of the vessel.
Held: He had been so entitled, but it was not a universal rule. It was not good enough to hide behind the fact that the assessment of general damages is a matter of fact for the jury. Damages must be assessed in accordance with a proper direction from the judge as to what the law requires and that involves the application of principle.
Lord Sumner said: ‘The measure of damages ought never to be governed by mere rules of practice, nor can such rules override the principles of the law on this subject’.’
There is no absolute rule requiring general damages to be calculated by reference to interest on capital.
Lord Sumner, Viscount Dunedin
[1926] AC 637, [1926] All ER Rep 114
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Parry v Cleaver HL 5-Feb-1969
PI Damages not Reduced for Own Pension
The plaintiff policeman was disabled by the negligence of the defendant and received a disablement pension. Part had been contributed by himself and part by his employer.
Held: The plaintiff’s appeal succeeded. Damages for personal injury were . .
Cited – West Midlands Travel Ltd v Aviva Insurance UK Ltd CA 18-Jul-2013
The claimant bus operator sought damages after one of its buses was off the road for several weeks. It made a claim for general damages for loss of use, using for that purpose a formula produced by the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK, which, . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Damages
Updated: 23 November 2021; Ref: scu.237518