BRODBECK v GOVERNMENT INSURANCE OFFICE OF NEW SOUTH WALES [1991] NSWCA 34

BRODBECK v GOVERNMENT INSURANCE OFFICE OF NEW SOUTH WALES

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

SAMUELS, CLARKE and HANDLEY JJA

12 august 1991, 12 August 1991

[1991] NSWCA 34

APPEAL — DAMAGES — GENERAL DAMAGES — NO

Clarke JA This is an appeal by a plaintiff for damages awarded to her by JudgeNash which totalled $53,939. It is her contention that the award is inadequate and that the dictates of justice require the assessment of much larger damages.

The plaintiff was born in 1967 and was eighteen when she was involved in the accident the subject of the claim. That accident happened on 7 September 1985. She sustained a number of injuries the two most important of which concerned her neck and her lower back. At the time of trial her neck was still troubling her although the medical evidence suggested that she might have further recovery in that area. Her most significant injury was the injury to her lower back which was ultimately disclosed as a disc protrusion.

In the year following the accident she underwent a deal of physiotherapy and late in that year she saw an orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Pillimer, and a neurologist, Dr Ell, both of whom found her to be fairly severely affected by pain from her lower back condition. Eventually Dr Johnston, neurosurgeon, saw her. He carried out a myelogram to confirm an earlier CAT scan and in the event the earlier diagnosis of disc protrusion was confirmed. On 12 October 1987 she underwent discectomy and approximately two months later she returned to her work. She had from the time she left school in 1983 and in 1984 worked for Westpac in various sedentary occupations and it is to that company that she returned although then only working 29 hours.

She was, I should add, married in August 1986 but partly, apparently, because of her distress and unhappiness and the pain she was suffering differences occurred between herself and her husband and they separated in October 1988. The facts are all set out in his Honour's judgment and it is, I think, unnecessary at this stage for me to say any more about them.