NEW SOUTH WALES INSURANCE MINISTERIAL CORPORATION v GRANT [1994] NSWCA 219

NEW SOUTH WALES INSURANCE MINISTERIAL CORPORATION v GRANT

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

PRIESTLEY, MEAGHER and HANDLEY JJA 13 October 1994, 13 October 1994

[1994] NSWCA 219

FACTS:

>The appellant sought to alter the assessment of damages for past and future economic loss where evidence of the findings of Grham DCJ were not contested.

HELD:

(1) In these circumstances appeal hopeless.

ORDERS:

(1) Appeal dismissed withe costs.

Priestley JA Mr Justice Meagher will give the court's reasons.

Meagher JA This is an appeal by the GIO against a verdict obtained by a successful plaintiff, Mr Maxwell John Grant, before his Honour Judge Graham on 29 April 1993, in the District Court sitting at Goulburn.

Mr Grant obtained a verdict of $256,123. None of that verdict is challenged except the past and future economic loss. Past economic loss was computed by his Honour to be $112,364; future economic loss was computed by his Honour to be $63,000.

Mr Grant was born in February 1932; therefore, at the date of trial, he did not have a long working life ahead of him.

The computations which his Honour made on economic loss, both past and future, were based on the following findings of fact which he specifically made:

(1) that Mr Grant retired early from his work at the council because of his disabilities due to his accident.

(2) that Mr Grant would have continued to have worked there until he was sixty-five years of age, had it not been for his accident-caused disabilities.

(3) that Mr Grant was unable to continue with his part-time drafting work and that, at the date of trial, he was unable to earn more than $120 a week in his furniture business.

It is not contested that there was evidence to support each of those findings of his Honour.

Although there was evidence to support those findings, counsel for the appellant has submitted that we should deviate from those findings. I do not see how we can do this as they were all credibility-based. Nor is it disputed that the actual figures reflect those findings of fact.