LOW DAMAGES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 643, 22 September 1933, Page 2

LOW DAMAGES

OLD PRACTICE OF AWARDS OF CONTEMPTUOUS sums. STILL IN FORCE. Though the farthing is not in circulation in Australia, juries in civil actions continue to follow the practiee, which grew up in English Courts of awarding the lowest coin of the British realm as contemptuous or ignominious damages. Such a verdict was given by a jury in a divoree suit in a Melbourne Court recently. Mr. Justice Macfarlan ordered that the farthing be paid into Court, but the order was necessary only to complete his judgment. OiRcials of the Supreme Court in Melbourne, says the "Argus," cannot reeall a ease in which the verdict has been obeyed. It is merely the jury's way of expressing its contempt for the amount of damages or injury which an aggrieved party, in its opinion, has suffered. Though there is no record in the Victorian Courts of a person mulct in one farthing damages ever having paid the coin into Court, any litigant who chose to abide by the Judge's order would have little trouble in obtaining the exact amount. The farthing has never been circulated in Australia and it is not mentioned in the schedule of coins attached to the Coinage Act (but as a curio it is common. Officials at the Mint estimated that there must be thousands of farthings in curio shops and private homes. Some years ago the Bank of New South "Wales imported £5 worth — 4,800 of them — for a dealer iri cniriR iri Svrlrip.v

The meaning of verdicts for contemptuous damages, whether the amount be a farthing, a shilling, or 20/-, is not always clear, and Judges and counsel are often puzzled by them. A jury may mean that an alleged slander or libel may be so nearly true that ignominious damages will suffiee; or the farthing may be given to indicate the jury's opinion that an action should never have been brought. Contemptuous damages also may be awarded to establish a right, as in a trespass, or to vindicate a character. It is said that there is still much doubt in law about the effect of a verdict for contemptuous damages. Though in juries may not realise it when they return such a verdict, it may have, and often has, in some kinds of litigation, the effect of depriving a successful party of his right to recover his costs from the other side. "It depends upon the Judge.," says a barrister, "but the normal rule is that contemptuous damages do not in themselves amount to good cause •for depriving a plaintiff of his costs."