Ng Kai Hau and Another v. Law Ngan
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CACV000016/1976
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----------------- Coram: Briggs, C.J., Huggins & Pickering, JJ.A. Date of Judgment: 3rd June 1976. ----------------- JUDGMENT ----------------- Huggins, J.A.: 1. I agree that there has been some duplication here. In my view the element of "loss of earning capacity" ought not to have been included with pain and suffering and loss of amenities. I suspect that the Registrar used the phrase in the sense in which it was used by the Court of Appeal in England in Moeliker v. A. Reyrolle & Co., Ltd. 1976 The Times, February 5. I indicated in LEE Woon-sun v. WONG Kin-keung Civ. App. 1975 No.26 that I thought its use in that sense might cause confusion and my belief is that it has done so here. Counsel for the Appellants suggested a figure of $45,000 or $50,000 for pain and suffering and loss of amenities and I would adopt the higher of the two. The kind of loss under discussion in Moeliker's Case does not come into question in the present case. 2. The assessment of the true loss of earning capacity, or what the Registrar has called "prospective loss of earnings", presents us with some difficulty. The Registrar has not stated directly that he believed that the Respondent would be unable to obtain any employment in the future, but by using the figure $950 (the total earnings at the time of the accident) as a basis for his calculation he appears to indicate such a conclusion. For my part I have some doubt whether it has been sufficiently proved that the Respondent will be unable to work again, but the implicit finding has not been challenged by way of cross-appeal and we are bound by it. The Registrar then took a multiplier of eight, having "taken into account the age of the Plaintiff, the expectation of working life of the Plaintiff and the uncertainties of life." I would have thought the Respondent might have expected a working life of nineteen years, i.e. until the age of 65, and a multiplier of eight was far too low. On the other hand a discount to $75,000 for the only factor then remaining - the immediate payment of a lump sum - was not enough: if, as the Registrar found, $91,200 would have been the true total loss the discounted figure should have been around $70,800. However, all things considered I do not think the award of $75,000 for loss of future earnings has been shown to be too high and, as Pickering, J.A. has said, if one assumes the multiplicand to have been correct the award might well have been higher. 3. In the result I would reduce the general damages by $10,000 and the interest of 8% ordered by the Registrar should be on the reduced sum of $50,000. 3rd June 1976. Representation: |