The plaintiff was able to recover the cost of a car hire till his repair bill had been paid by the insurers, where he was himself unable to pay the bill. ‘. . at the present day it is generally accepted that, in what Lord Wright termed ‘the varied web of affairs’ that follows a sequence of events after an accident of this kind, it is only in an exceptional case that it is possible or correct to isolate impecuniosity, as it is sometimes called, or the plaintiff’s inability to pay for the cost of repairs from his own resources as a separate cause and as terminating the consequences of a defendant’s wrong. It seems to me necessary today to consider whether, having regard to all the circumstances of the case and the resources available to a plaintiff, resources known by the defendant or her representatives to be of a kind that will not be able to provide for the repairs themselves, in all the circumstances, the plaintiff has acted reasonably and with commercial prudence.’
Judges:
Beldam LJ, Nourse and Stocker LJJ
Citations:
Gazette 02-Sep-1992, [1993] RTR 13
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Lagden v O’Connor HL 4-Dec-2003
The parties had been involved in a road traffic accident. The defendant drove into the claimant’s parked car. The claimant was unable to afford to hire a car pending repairs being completed, and arranged to hire a car on credit. He now sought . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Damages
Updated: 31 July 2022; Ref: scu.83484