Stanley v Saddique
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE PURCHAS,LORD JUSTICE RALPH GIBSON,SIR DAVID CROOM-JOHNSON |
| Judgment Date | 18 May 1990 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1990] EWCA Civ J0518-7 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | 90/0514 |
| Date | 18 May 1990 |
[1990] EWCA Civ J0518-7
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
WORCESTER DISTRICT REGISTRY
MORLAND J.
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Purchas
Lord Justice Ralph Gibson
and
Sir David Croom-Johnson
90/0514
MR. R. CLEGG Q.C. and MR. N. WORSLEY (instructed by Messrs Howarths) appeared on behalf of the Appellant (First Defendant)
MR. P. ASHWORTH Q.C. and MR. A. HUGHES (instructed by Messrs Parkinson Wright) appeared on behalf of the Respondent (Plaintiff).
This is an appeal from the judgment and order of Morland J. dated 13th July 1989 awarding damages in the sum of £34,536 in favour of David Dean Stanley ("the minor") against Mohammed Saddique the driver of a motor car involved in an accident on 24th March 1984 as a result of which the minor's mother, Elaine Stallard, was killed. In an action brought under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 (as amended) ("the Act") Mohammed Saddique admitted liability and the trial proceeded solely on the question of damages. The minor brings the action by his father and next friend, David John Stanley, who was not married to his mother. The details of what the judge described as "the tangled web of family relationships which occurred before and after the minor's birth" are set out in the judgment but need not be rehearsed in detail here. The appellant does not challenge any of the findings of fact reached by the judge and subject to one matter raised by Mr. Ashworth, who appeared for the respondent, it is not necessary to go behind these findings to consider the evidence.
The basis of the claim is the dependency of the minor upon his mother. The mother was married to a Frederick Stallard by whom she had three children. The first one, who was born whilst the mother was still under 21 and some months before her marriage, was, unfortunately, crippled and suffered from a speech defect. She was born in February 1978. The two younger children were sons: one born in June 1979 and the second born in March 1981.
In the summer of 1982 the mother began an association with the minor's father who was himself married but had been divorced. The father had had one son by his marriage who lived with his mother. The father, although associating with the minor's mother, kept in contact with his former wife to whom he returned from time to time. The mother and father were at Blackpool for the duration of the summer of 1982. They obtained accommodation—a living room and bedroom in a guesthouse—and both obtained part-time casual work: the mother as a waitress and later as a chambermaid, and the father as a barman in a public house. Part of the defendant's case was based upon the mother's leaving her children, the youngest being at the material time between 15 and 18 months of age, in order to go to Blackpool with the father. However, on the other side of this coin during that summer the mother clearly missed her children and telephoned home to her husband for news of them. The result was that her husband and the two children came to Blackpool. In addition, the father's former wife went to Blackpool and as a result, for a matter of a few weeks, each of the minors' parents returned to their respective former spouses. The mother was the first to leave their respective former spouses for the second time and, having found a place to live, invited the father to join her. During 1982 and 1983 the mother had a number of lowly paid casual and part-time jobs such as working in the kitchen of a restaurant, working in the fields picking fruit and in a public house. In December of 1983 the minor was born and thereafter lived with his mother but neither of them were maintained by the father.
At the time of the mother's death the father was working with a net weekly wage of about £63. The mother and the minor were supported by social security benefits. At the time of the death the minor's father was absent from work for about three weeks looking after the minor. Subsequently he resumed work for a short time.
In about June 1984 the father met a young woman named Tracey Stanley ("Tracey"). They were working together picking strawberries. They were married on 3rd November 1984 after which the two moved into Tracey's flat. Tracey had a daughter of her own who by that time was aged eight and a son was subsequently born to the father and Tracey in 1985.
The judge found that after his marriage to Tracey the father settled down and was a good father to the minor. The judge was impressed by Tracey:—
"…I am satisfied that she is providing excellent motherly services to the plaintiff, and that she makes no distinction between the three children of the family. The plaintiff is fully accepted as a member of the family of the plaintiff's father and his stepmother.
I am satisfied that the services being provided by the plaintiff's stepmother for the plaintiff are of a higher quality than could foreseeably have been expected to have been provided by the plaintiff's mother. That the infant plaintiff has a good prospect that those will continue to be provided by his stepmother until after he leaves school and is of an age of about 18 when he is able to look after himself entirely".
The judge then made important findings about the mother:—
"I cannot avoid making an assessment of the plaintiff's mother. What I find about her is the result of my assessment of the evidence given by the plaintiff's father; by the plaintiff's mother's first husband (Mr. Stallard) and by her friend Mrs. Alldret.
So far as the services of a motherly kind likely to have been provided by the plaintiff's mother if she had lived, I have reached the clear conclusion that they would have been of an indifferent quality and lacking in continuity. Some indication of her reliability as a mother was the fact that she left her three children, one, the daughter, handicapped; and the other, the younger boy, extremely young, for an irresponsible association with the plaintiff's father in Blackpool.…
I now consider the question of financial support by the plaintiff's mother for the plaintiff. Probably from time to time his mother would have obtained work and would have supplied some measure of financial support. I am satisfied, on the evidence, that the probabilities were that she would, more often than not, have been unemployed or living on social security benefits, but from time to time would have obtained work of a casual nature. She was interested in flower arranging.
By the time of her fatal accident, the plaintiff's mother had been working at home for a flower shop making flower arrangements such as bouquets and wreaths. However, the flower shop venture would, in any event, have come to an end within a matter of weeks because the owner of the shop died and his wife returned to Canada. But as her conversations with Mrs. Alldret showed, it clearly was the plaintiff's mother's intention to work which would of course have adversely affected the amount of time and care she could have given to the infant plaintiff. Moreover, in any event, the work, as I find, would have been spasmodic and ill-paid.
It is highly improbable that the plaintiff's mother and father would have married. On 29th February 1984 she proposed to him, but his reply was: 'I'll give you an answer in four years time'.
But for his mother's death, the plaintiff's prospects would have been bleak both so far as care and financial security are concerned.
Anyone considering the outlook for the plaintiff at the time of his mother's death would have come to the conclusion that the most likely outcome for his future was that he would be put into care. However, it was his father who came to his aid and looked after him in the months before he married Tracey".
Based on these findings the first contention of the defendants was that as the minor was better off in the home provided by his father and Tracey than he would ever have been with his mother there was no loss of dependency and, therefore, no damages to be awarded under the Act. The judge did not accede to this contention but calculated a loss of dependency adopting the multiplier/multiplicand approach: see Spittle v. Bunney [1988] 1 W.L.R. 847. However, at the end of his judgment at the request of the defendants he assessed two figures for damages on the basis that he was wrong to do this but taking into account the short period between the mother's death and the date when the minor became part of the family unit established by the father and Tracey. The judge's assessment of damages was as follows:—
"However, in this case I am dealing with a mother who, on the balance of probabilities, was going to be much absent from home, leaving her child with an unqualified child minder such as Mrs. Alldret.
In my judgment, it would be appropriate in this case to assess the value of the plaintiff's mother's services at the rate of £3,000 per year in the early years of the plaintiff's life. As he grew older and went to school and as he became a teenager, those services would become less necessary and would in fact become much less onerous.
Bearing in mind the extreme infancy of the plaintiff at the date of his mother's death, I consider an overall multiplier from the date of her death to be one of 12 years. For the first four years of the 12 year period I consider a multiplicand of £3,000 a year to be appropriate. For the next four years a multiplicand of £2,000 per year to be appropriate and for the final four years a multiplicand of £1,000 to be...
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