JURIES’ PROBLEMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1938, Page 3

JURIES’ PROBLEMS

“EXPECTATION OF LIFE.”. MENTAL ACROBATS. The view that “mental agility and gymnastics” are required by a jury to assess damages for loss of expectation of life was expressed by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Hewart, directing a jury in the King’s Bench Division, says the “Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.” Lord Hewart said that before 1934 the law gave a right to dependants to sue the negligent party for damages which would represent the pecuniary loss they suffered from the death of that person. That Act still existed, but upon it had been superimposed another law, the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1934.

Lord Hewart explained that, stripping the Act of its legal technicality, it meant that, although a man was dead, there nevertheless remained, not indeed for his own benefit —which was not possible—but for the benefit of his estate, all causes of action vested in him.

Applying that to the cause of an accident the position seemed to be that, at the moment preceding his death, the unfortunate man was of some particular position in life, with some particular outlook and some expectation —or lack of expectation—of life. r “If a man were asked, in cold blood, what he would take to submit to a violent end,” said Lord Hewitt, “he would say that there was no such sum.

“It is not merely that there is no sum large enough, but that the mind recoils from such a problem. It seems that mental agility and gymnastics are required by a jury to assess that sum, but the question has to be faced." In this case there was a young man approaching his twenty-second birthday. He was an all-round sportsman, with every prospect of a long life. That prospect had been put to an end, and the loss had to be assessed in terms of pounds sterling. The jury awarded £2OOO to Mr Frederick Walton, of Senhouse Road, Maryport, Cumberland, against Mr John Averall, Jacob, of Aldermanss Hill, Palmers Green, N. That sum, they held, represented the loss the estate of the plaintiff’s son, Frederick Jordan Walton, 21, had suffered because of the shortening of the expectation of his life. He died following a collision on Stags Hill, Enfield, in September, 1937, between his bicycle and Mr Jacob’s motor car. A stay of execution was granted on condition . that the £2OOO was paid into Court, and notice of appeal entered within 14 days.