JACKSON AND ANOTHER V. JACKSON

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

°

JACKSON AND ANOTHER

JACKSON

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

Judgment delivered at......- SX DNBY ecco THURSDAY 8th APRID.1971...

on.

JACKSON AND ANOTHER ve

JACKSON -

ORDER

Appeal dismissed with costs.

JACKSON AND ANOTHER

JACKSON

JUDGMENT BARWICK C.J.

Pa

JACKSON AND ANOTHER

JACKSON

The Court of Appeal Division of the Supreme Court. was.of opinion in this matter that the amount of the damages awarded by the trial judge did not in itself manifest error because excessive in the relevant sense. However, the court thought the trial judge had erred in principle in- two respects in his approach to the assessment of damages. Regarding itself as free because of these errors to re-assess the damages, the court did so, assessing them at $94,000 or 36,000 less than the amount of the trial judge's assessment. The appellant seeks to have that assessment set aside as manifestly excessive. There is no cross appeal by the respondent so I have no need to consider whether or not what the Court of Appeal thought were errors of principle, were such rather than mere attitudes to questions of fact.

My own inclination is to think that both the trial judge's assessment and that of the Court of Appeal Division were so much too high as to warrant a re-assessment. I feel that on the evidence, as distinct from what may possibly have been the actual fact, the element of economic loss in the assessment bulked far too largely in the ultimate figure at which both

trial judge and Court of Appeal arrived. However, in a matter

in which so much must turn on personal judgment, I am not prepared in the particular circumstances of this case to dissent from the course which all of my brothers involved in the case, whose reasons for judgment I have read, propose

to take.

&

JUDGMENT

JACKSON _AND ANOTHER

Ve

MoTIERNAN J.