“EXPECTATION” OF LIFE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23702, 9 January 1939, Page 9

“EXPECTATION” OF LIFE

JUDGE’S DEFINITION JURIES MUST DECIDE AWARDS LONDON, Dec. 15. Three Lords Justices, sitting in the Court of Appeal, ruled that the correct attitude for courts to take in assessing the scale of awards on “ loss of expectation of life ” was to leave it to juries to decide the measure of right of me dead person. They had dismissed, without calling on counsel for the respondents, an appeal for which Mr Justice Charges had granted unconditional leave “ because he thought the damages were very excessive.”

In the King’s Bench Division a common jury had awarded £IOOO to Mr Victor Bailey, of Oldfield lane, Greenford, Middlesex, for the “ loss of expectation of life ” of his three-year-old daughter Hazel, who was killed when a car in charge of a “ earner driver,” Mr Arthur John Howard, of Brownlow road. New Southgate, crashed into the front garden of his house and struck a perambulator in which were Hazel and her younger sister, Norma. In addition, £350 was awarded in regard to Norma, who. it was stated, suffered from shock and abrasions, but bad made a good recovery apart from consequent nervousness. Astronomical Figures

Mr R. P. Monier-Williams, for Mr Howard, said that if one approached consideration of “ loss of expectation of life ” in the same way as juries considered fixing compensation for personal injuries, then one was forced into the region of astronomical figures. In the majority of cases the figure so arrived at would be so great that no one could pay It. Lord Justice Scott: Will you assume that the court has already conceived the possibility of the problem being a difficult one? I should like to be referred to each of the decisions which have been reported on this matter. Mr Monier-Williams: I have them here, and I suggest that the damages in such cases should be, as I have said, a token amount..

Lord Justice Scott: Putting it in schoolboys’ language, is that not “funking” the question? Mr Monier-Williams: I submit not. It is not compensation to the person, but to the estate. The estate is receiving something for the loss of someone else’s life.

Lord Justice Scott, giving judgment, said counsel had Submitted that, though the Act had conferred on the representatives of a deceased person a right to damages, those representatives were entitled only. to something substantially less than the deceased person might have recovered. “ In my view,” said the Lord Justice. “ there is no warrant for that submission as a principle of law under the Act or in any case which has been decided in the House of Lords, in this court or by a judge of first instance.” No Quantitative Scale

“In the peculiar circumstances of this cause of action,” continued the Lord Justice, “I see no means of arriving at any sort of quantitative scale for the guidance of judges or juries except the gradual working out, chifly through the common sense of juries of the sort of figures that in English civilisation to-day are regarded as reasonable for that particular right to damages. , , . , “Whether., ultimately, any sort of scale will be worked out, or whether the assessment will remain permanently empirical, one cannot say. but to-dav my own view is that the right attitude for courts to take is that it is essentially a matter for the jury, under a direction of the judge, to decide the measure of the right which the deceased person possessed.” folds Justices MacKinnon and du Pa icq agreed.