Car Accident in UK Law

It seems to me that prima facie their value is represented by the difference between what she was willing to pay 1st Automotive and what she would have been willing to pay an ordinary car hire company for the use of a car. The difference represents the value of the additional services which they provided. I quite accept that a determination of the value of the benefits which must be brought into account will depend upon the facts of each case.

Mrs. Dimond was at the time of the accident the owner and person in possession of her car. However even where the chattel is non profit earning (as was Mrs. Dimond's car) there may still be scope for awarding general damages for loss of use: The Mediana [1900] A.C. 113; Admiralty Commissioners v. S.S. Chekiang [1926] A.C. 637; Admiralty Commissioners v. Susquehanna [1926] A.C. 655.

The sum which she paid, having regard to what she was to get was, on the evidence, reasonable. But she cannot claim the whole cost as the cost of mitigating the loss of the use of her car. The cost of that was, on the evidence, only about £24 per day. The remainder of what she paid was attributable to other matters and therefore should not be included in the cost of mitigation.

The duty to take care is the duty to avoid doing or omitting to do anything the doing or omitting to do which may have as its reasonable and probable consequence injury to others and the duty is owed to those to whom injury may reasonably and probably be anticipated if the duty is not observed.

The true meaning is that the plaintiff is not entitled to charge the defendant by way of damages with any greater sum than that which he reasonably needs to expend for the purpose of making good the loss. In short, he is fully entitled to be as extravagant as he pleases but not at the expense of the defendant.

The broad principle should surely be that a person should not be permitted to claim in England in respect of a matter for which civil liability does not exist, or is excluded, under the law of the place where the wrong was committed.

Lord Lloyd said that a plaintiff who had been within the range of foreseeable injury was a primary victim. In my view it follows that all other victims, who suffer pure psychiatric harm, are secondary victims and must satisfy the control mechanisms laid down in Alcock. In any event, the decision of the House of Lords in Page v. Smith was plainly intended, in the context of pure psychiatric harm, to narrow the range of potential secondary victims.