LARSEN v NSW INSURANCE MINISTERIAL CORPORATION [1993] NSWCA 119

LARSEN v NSW INSURANCE MINISTERIAL CORPORATION SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES — COURT OF APPEAL

KiRBY P, MEAGHER JA and HANDLEY JA 5 November 1993

[1993] NSWCA 119

DAMAGES — personal injury — rigger 38 years — osteoarthritis in wrist — judgment for $349,495 — appeal and cross appeal — errors in amounts in calculation — challenge to general damages — complaint about past and future economic loss — errors in reasoning — failure to allow for special contingencies in case — held: Appeal and cross appeal dismissed — Court does not fine tune damages judgments — overall result correct.

Kirby P. I will ask Meagher JA to deliver the first judgment.

Meagher JA. In this matter the plaintiff, Mr Larsen, suffered an accident on 18 October 1985 when he was thirty-one years of age. His Honour Judge McDevitt, on the hearing of the action, awarded a verdict in the sum of $349,495.67 in his favour. This has attracted an appeal from the defendant and a cross-appeal from the plaintiff.

The case contained a number of points on which we have heard detailed argument. The case seems to be more difficult from a mathematical reservation than most cases. On the cross-appeal, the plaintiff was undoubtedly correct when he complains that his Honour took in out-of-pocket expenses at an unjustifiably low figure of $865.00 instead of $9,108.00. The plaintiff is also correct — and the appellant accepted — in alleging that his Honour took an unjustifiable interest rate for past economic loss, namely, four per cent instead of seven per cent. If one adjusted his Honour's figures toaccount for these two items one would have to add the best part of another $25,000.00 to the verdict.

The defendant on the appeal has attacked three main areas. One is the general damages, as to which I should say at once I would not disturb them in the slightest, particularly in view of the discretionary nature of general damages. Secondly, as to the past economic loss, the appellant makes a number of complaints but bearing in mind that the figure which his Honour awarded was only $84,861.00, and the figure which the appellant suggests is correct is $78,000.00, the complaints are hardly of major interest.