Non Pecuniary Remedies in UK Law

Thus the net result of the shipping cases can be stated as follows. Where a substitute vessel is hired in to fulfil the role of the damaged vessel, the costs of hiring in are recoverable. Where the claimant's fleet is sufficient to provide a standby, then an award may be made based upon the expenses of keeping that standby, which means not only the expenses of daily upkeep but something representing the amount of capital employed in having another ship available.

In that respect, perusal of the Current Law Year Books yields references to awards in County Courts up and down the country of conventional weekly sums based not upon car hire rates but on a modest rising scale from £40 or £50 per week in 1995 to £100 per week in 2005 in respect of disruption and inconvenience caused to individual claimants for loss of use of their private motor car during periods of repair in cases where, for reasons of impecuniosity or otherwise, no substitute vehicle has been hired by, or otherwise made available to, the claimant (see for instance Zubair v Younis [1995] CLY para. 1625; Ballard Digital Equipment ibid para. 626; Houghton v Mears ibid para. 1622 and Mullins v Phillips [2005] CLY para. 963; Brown v P E Thorpe and Sons ibid para. 964).

Damages in consequence of a breach of a person's private rights are not the same as vindicatory damages to vindicate some constitutional right. In the present context, the damages are an award to compensate for the loss or diminution of a right to control formerly private information and for the distress that the respondents could justifiably have felt because their private information had been exploited, and are assessed by reference to that loss.

The task of assessing damages is easier with a profit-earning ship and depends on the probability that she would have earned so much money if her owner could have used her. With a non-profit-earning ship there is no direct financial loss and one must ask what harm was done to the owner by his being deprived of the use of his ship. Then comes what may be a very difficult task, to put a value in money on the harm which the owner has suffered.

Where the Order of the Court has been that trial is to be with a Jury, then twelve jurors have collectively (and, be it remembered, unanimously) to decide upon as assessment.

It is and must be accepted that at least in cases of assault and similar torts, it is appropriate to compensate for injury to feelings including the indignity, mental suffering, humiliation or distress that might be caused by such an attack, as well as anger or indignation arising from the circumstances of the attack.

Given the essentially artificial, and therefore arbitrary, nature of the exercise involved in the assessment of general damages, there is a risk of markedly different levels of compensation resulting from individual assessments of what they should be. The need for some general guidance as to the appropriate amounts in similar cases is obvious. It was that need which prompted the statement in Heil v Rankin in para 25 to the following effect: