A NICE PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 103, 3 May 1935, Page 9

A NICE PROBLEM.

SUFFERINGS OF DEAD.

DAMAGES FOR PAIN

A LAW «REFORM." (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, April 13. A case at Birmingham Assizes has set the Lord Chancellor a new problem. lie set up the Law Revision Committee last year. Within six months the first instalment of reform was achieved by the Law Reform Act, 1934. This Act extended the rights of a dead man's representatives to recover damages for wrongs suffered by him before death. In the case at Birmingham the plaintiff was the father of a girl who died following a motor accident. It was contended that under the Act he could claim everything she could have claimed, and that, therefore, he was entitled to damages for the pain and suffering she had experienced. The father was awarded £300 damages to represent his dependence on his daughter, and £500 for the pain and suffering endured by the daughter. If this decision is right the reformers have created a position more ludicrous than that which they sought to reform. It is full of startling possibilities. A mail in Australia could claim damages because a friend, whose estate he inherited, had suffered agony in a Manchester hospital. A son could obtain compensation because his dead mother had recently lost a leg in an accident, ff a man is killed his representatives, however remotely they may be connected, can benefit to the extent of what the dead man might reasonably have been expected to earn in the future. A doctor whose negligence had caused the death of a patient might find himself forced to pay damages to some person only distantly related to the patient.