STEDUL v GOVERNMENT INSURANCE OFFICE OF NEW SOUTH WALES [1995] NSWCA 453

STEDUL v GOVERNMENT INSURANCE OFFICE OF NEW SOUTH WALES

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF APPEAL

HANDLEY and POWELL JJA 2 May 1995, 2 May 1995 [1995] NSWCA 453

Damages — Personal injuries — Inadequacy Practice and Procedure — Experts reports — Service of — Report produced on subpoena — Whether admissible even though not served District Court Rules Pt28 R9 Dawson v Hall (Court of Appeal 29 July 1994 (as yet unreported)

Handley JA I will ask Powell JA to deliver the first judgment.

Powell JA This is an Appeal from a verdict found, and judgment entered, on 29 October 1993 by McLachlan DCJ in proceedings which had been brought by the present Appellant seeking to recover damages for the negligence of the Respondent's insured in the driving of a motor vehicle in April 1986.

A variety of grounds of appeal have been taken but, in substance, the principal ground of appeal is that the award of damages which his Honour made in favour of the Appellant was "manifestly inadequate", the other grounds of appeal being subsidiary in nature, and going to matters which, so it has been submitted, affected, or were likely to have affected, the reasoning process which led his Honour to find the verdict in the amount which he did.

The proceedings related to an incident which, as I have earlier indicated, occurred in April 1986, at which time the Appellant was employed, as he had been, for about six years prior thereto, as a bus driver, driving buses for the Urban Transit Authority ("the Authority"). At the time, the Appellant was, in the course of his employment, driving one of the Authority's buses in Canterbury Road, Campsie, when a truck attempted to cut across from one lane to another and struck the bus which the Appellant was driving, causing it to be moved sideways and to collide with another motor vehicle, and causing the Appellant to fall forward and strike his chest on the driving wheel.