Fatal Accident in UK Law

In times of stable currency the multipliers that were used by judges were appropriate to interest rates of 4% to 5% whether the judges using them were conscious of this or not. Inflation is taken care of in a rough and ready way by the higher rates of interest obtainable as one of the consequences of it and no other practical basis of calculation has been suggested that is capable of dealing with so conjectural a factor with greater precision.

The question of damages for non-economic loss which bulks large in personal injury actions, however, does not arise in the instant case. It has not been argued before your Lordships and I refrain from expressing any view about it.]

The court has to make the best estimates that it can having regard to the deceased's age and state of health and to his actual earnings immediately before his death, as well as to the prospects of any increases in his earnings due to promotion or other reasons. Assessment of damages in this way requires the pecuniary loss to be split into two parts, relating respectively to the period before the trial and the period after the trial, in the same way as it is split in a personal accident case.

In a personal injury case, if the injured person has survived until the date of trial, that is a known fact and the multiplier appropriate to the length of his future working life has to be ascertained as at the date of trial. But in a fatal accident case the multiplier must be selected once and for all as at the date of death, because everything that might have happened to the deceased after that date remains uncertain.

The Courts invariably assess the lump sum on the "scale" for figures current at the date of the trial - which is much higher than the figure current at the date of the injury or, at the date of the writ. The plaintiff thus stands to gain by the delay in bringing the case to trial. He ought not to gain still more by having interest from the date of service of the writ.

The judgments, further, bring out an important ingredient, which I would accept, namely that the amount to be recovered in respect of earnings in the "lost" years should be after deduction of an estimated sum to represent the victim's probable living expenses during those years. I think that this is right because the basis, in principle, for recovery lies in the interest which he has in making provision for dependants and others, and this he would do out of his surplus.

Essentially what the court has to do is to calculate as best it can the sum of money which will on the one hand be adequate, by its capital and income, to provide annually for the injured person a sum equal to his estimated annual loss over the whole of the period during which that loss is likely to continue, but which, on the other hand, will not, at the end of that period, leave him in a better financial position than he would have been apart from the accident.