Compensations in UK Law

In effect the Court, before it interferes with an award of damages, should be satisfied that the Judge has acted upon a wrong principle of law, or has misapprehended the facts, or has for these or other reasons made a wholly erroneous estimate of the damage suffered. It is not enough that there is a balance of opinion or preference. The scale must go down heavily against the figure attacked if the Appellate Court is to interfere, whether on the ground of excess or insufficiency.

The identification of actionable damage is an integral part of the rules which determine liability. As I have previously had occasion to say, it makes no sense simply to say that someone is liable in tort. He must be liable for something and the rules which determine what he is liable for are inseparable from the rules which determine the conduct which gives rise to liability.

Nor do I accept that the plaintiffs must give credit under the heading of "betterments for the fact that their new factory is modern in design and materials. To do so would be the equivalent of forcing the plaintiffs to invest their money in the modernising of their plant which might be highly inconvenient for then.

We were referred to the cases where a house is damaged or destroyed by the fault of a tortfeasor. If the injured person reasonably goes to the expense of repairing the house, the tortfeasor may well be bound to pay the cost of repair, less an allowance because new work takes the place of old: see Lukin v. Godsell, Peake's Additional Cases, 15; Hide v. Thornborough (1846) 2 Carrington & Kirwan, 250.

Parliament cannot have intended that the acquiring authority should pay as compensation a larger amount than the owner could reasonably have obtained for his land in the absence of the power. For the same reason there should also be disregarded the 'special want' of an acquiring authority for a particular site which arises from the authority having been authorised to acquire it.

Is there any reason why the court should not award by way of damages for breach of contract some modest sum, not based on difference in value, but solely to compensate the buyer for his disappointed expectations? I do not give a final answer to that question in the present case. But it may be that it would have afforded an alternative ground for justifying the judge's award of damages.

(1) Interpretation is the ascertainment of the meaning which the document would convey to a reasonable person having all the background knowledge which would reasonably have been available to the parties in the situation in which they were at the time of the contract.