Remedies

Question 1

What are the two principle remedies?

Answer 1

Damages and injunctions

Question 2

What is an injunction?

Answer 2

An order forcing the defendant to act or preventing the defending from acting in a certain way

Question 3

What are damages?

Answer 3

An award of money

Question 4

What is the aim of damages?

Answer 4

• compensatory damages
• The aim of damages in the law of tort is to put the claimant in the position they would have been in but for the defendant’s tortious act, as far as this is possible with an award of money.

Question 5

Are damages forward or backwards looking?

Answer 5

backwards looking – it seeks to restore the claimant to the positionbeforethe tort happened.

Question 6

What does compensatory damages mean?

Answer 6

Damages awarded to compensate the claimant for the harm they have suffered.

Question 7

What are aggravated damages?

Answer 7

These are still compensatory damages, but the damages awarded will be of a greater sum to compensate serious injury to the claimant beyond that regarded as normal.
This will arise where the tort has been committed in a malicious, insulting or oppressive manner, such as to cause distress or to harm the claimant’s dignity or pride.

Question 8

Name types of non-compensatory damages?

Answer 8

• nominal damages
  awarded where the case is proved but the claimant has not actually suffered any loss
• contemptuous damages
  a very small award (eg 1p) awarded when the court technically gives judgment for the claimant but wishes to indicate that the case was without merit and should not have been brought.
• exemplary damages
  punitive, additional award on top of compensatory damages

Question 9

What are the two categories of compensatory damages?

Answer 9

General and special damages

Question 10

What are special damages? Include examples.

Answer 10

covers specifically provable and quantifiable financial losses

• e.g. any loss of earnings resulting from an injury up to the date of trial
• cost of repairing things
• medical care expenses

Question 11

What are general damages?

Answer 11

covers future financial losses, which cannot be specifically proven, and non-quantifiable losses such as compensation for physical injury

• e.g. pain, suffering and loss of amenity (compensates for the effect of the injury on the claimants lifestyle)
• loss of earnings from the date of trial onwards (future financial loss)
• lump sum calculated using the multiplier approach

Question 12

What can be subtracted from damages?

Answer 12

• state benefits received as a result from the injury (unemployment benefit)
• contractual sick pay
• redundancy payment

Question 13

Will insurance payouts be subtracted from damages?

Answer 13

No

Question 14

What type of claim from an estate does the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934 allow?

Answer 14

• Under this Act the ‘estate’ may bring a claim for any losses suffered by the deceased as a result of an accident up to the date of death. This will be calculated on the same basis as a normal personal injury award.
• No claim can be made for any losses that might have arisen after the date of death (s 1(2)(a)).
• no claim for the death itself.

Question 15

What type of claim from an estate does the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 allow?

Answer 15

• claim for any losses suffered by the dependants of the deceased (ie people who depended on the deceased) as a result of the death. Usually this will be a claim by a family when the deceased was earning wages which were shared with the family, and the family has now lost that support.
• The Act defines dependants as close blood relations and those related by marriage or who have cohabited for over two years (s 1(3)). Their claim is assessed in much the same way as a personal injury claim.
• the spouse of the deceased or the parents of an unmarried minor to claim damages for bereavement as a result of the death.
• recovery of funeral expenses, in certain circumstances.