A vessel was damaged by collision. What was the amount to be paid to the owners of the damaged vessel for its repair?
Held: The measure of the indemnification to which the owner of the damaged vessel was entitled was co-extensive with the amount of the damage: ‘The right against the wrongdoer is for a restitutio in integrum, and this restitution he is bound to make without calling upon the party injured to assist him in any way whatsoever. If the settlement of the indemnification be attended with any difficulty (and in those cases difficulties must and will frequently occur), the party in fault must bear the inconvenience. He has no right to fix this inconvenience upon the injured party; and if that party derives incidentally a greater benefit than mere indemnification, it arises only from the impossibility of otherwise effecting such indemnification without exposing him to some loss or burden, which the law will not place upon him.’ It is not open to the wrongdoer to require the injured party to bear any part of the cost of obtaining such indemnification for his loss as will place him in the same position as he was before the accident.
Judges:
Dr Lushington
Citations:
(1844) 2 W Rob 279
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 . .
Cited – Bacon v Cooper (Metals) Ltd 1982
A machine, a fragmentiser was broken. The defendant had supplied unsuitable scrap to be fed into the machine in breach of contract. The rotor had broken which would normally have had a life of 7 years of which it had nearly four years to run. The . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Damages
Updated: 07 December 2022; Ref: scu.188637