Loss of expectation of life

Injuries can shorten the victim’s life. If the evidence is that the plaintiff will live a shorter time than he or
she would have without the injury, then logically this is a total loss of amenities for the period by which
the lifespan is reduced. The common law permits damages for this. The amount, of course, is as
arbitrary as amounts for a comatose plaintiff’s loss of amenities. It is after all a monetary valuation of life
itself: courts thus tend to make explicitly arbitrary (‘conventional’) awards.

Other harms

Injuries may have many different effects on a plaintiff’s life. If nursing care and attention is required, but
the plaintiff is able to live at home, that care and attention will likely be supplied by family members.
The financial aspect of this may be covered under the head of future expenses; but there may well be an
emotional aspect too. In particular, if the plaintiff is adult and the family member who is caring for him
or her is a spouse, the marriage may be affected as a relationship. This is usually expressed by courts as
‘strain’; relations may change for the worse if the plaintiff’s wife is obliged to deal with his fits and
depression. Such an effect is compensable.

The risk that the marriage may break down entirely under such strain is also compensable, a matter of
guessing at probability like any other risk. Similarly, the injury may reduce an unmarried plaintiff’s
chance of marriage; this is compensable on the same basis. (Note that marriage is a matter of pecuniary
losses, and gains, as well as an ‘amenity’.)

The plaintiff’s relations with other people may be affected in other ways (apart from commercial and
employment relations, relevant under economic losses). For instance, Australian courts have awarded
damages for the reduced or lost chance to advance in rank in an aboriginal tribal hierarchy caused by an
injury. One can imagine how an inability to drive, to walk long distances, to play with children, to handle
particular tools or machinery, or any other handicap, can affect a given plaintiff’s enjoyment of life not
just in itself but also by eliminating other activities.

The mental effects of injuries can be recognised as compensable suffering or loss of amenity. The
plaintiff may have acquired fears associated with the injury-causing event (fear of flying after an airplane
accident, for instance). Like the anxiety produced by a shortened life, the anxiety produced by an injury
which threatens harm to mother or baby if the female plaintiff becomes pregnant is compensable. The
recognised mental suffering may also be produced by the very way the injury was created, especially if
this was by an intentional tort: in Kralj v McGrath (1995) Times, 24 November, the English Court of
Appeal approved increasing damages for physical injury when the injury was caused by the defendant’s
rape of the plaintiff.

Note that a type of loss recognised in this way, as part of general damages for loss of amenities, may
become commonly enough claimed that courts start treating it as a head of special damages. The
English Court of Appeal, in Heil v Rankin, mentions the extra expenses of taking a holiday if one has
become physically handicapped as one such new head. We can imagine the same process occurring
with, say, the extra expenses of attending school or university if one is handicapped.

Non-economic loss

Non-defined by the CLA. Broadly speaking Non-economic loss deals with intangible damages, such as
pain and suffering, loss of amenities, loss of expectation of life, and disfigurement.

These damages are assessed subjectively so that the unconscious plaintiff, who is unaware of his/her
plight, will receive less for non-economic loss

Loss of expectation of life:

The shortening of the plaintiff’s life expectancy.

Case Law: Skelton V Collins The plaintiff could not regain consciousness after the accident due to the
extensive brain injury, and was expected to die within 6 months of the trail date. The plaintiff was not
entitled to any damages for pain and suffering, as he had no feeling from the date of the accident. The
plaintiff was able to receive a small and conventional sum for loss of expectation of life, due to the fact
that there has been a shortening of the plaintiffs life expectancy. Mental anguish is calculated under loss
of amenities.

http://www.academia.edu/6879387/Study_Notes_for_Tort_Law_Assessment_of_damages