Disability Health Care Claim

Cooke V United Bristol Health Care : Sheppard V Stibbe & Anor : Page V Lee (2003)

Expert evidence as to the method of calculating future loss was rightly excluded as it constituted an illegitimate attack on the Lord Chancellor's discount rate set under s.1 Damages Act 1996.

Damages - Personal Injury - Evidence

CA (Laws LJ, Dyson LJ, Carnwath LJ) 16/10/2003

LTL 16/10/2003 (Unreported elsewhere)

Document No.: AC0105898

Expert evidence as to the method of calculating future loss was rightly excluded as it constituted an illegitimate attack on the Lord Chancellor's discount rate set under s.1 Damages Act 1996.

Conjoined appeals in personal injury cases against separate orders refusing to admit expert evidence on the calculation of future loss. Each claimant had been severely and permanently disabled. There was no dispute as to liability. In each case the claimants had sought to introduce the evidence of a chartered accountant ('H') who advised litigants on the financial aspects of legal disputes. The burden of H's evidence would have been to the effect that the future cost of care in each case would have been grossly underestimated if the conventional method of assessing damages were applied, since care costs rose at a greater rate than retail price index.

H argued that to address the shortfall it was necessary to produce revised multiplicands with stepped increases over time. The defendants argued that:

(i) any acceptance by a trial court of H's submissions would have the effect of nullifying the discount rate set by the Lord Chancellor in the Damages (Personal Injury) Order 2001 SI 2001/2301 under s.1 Damages Act 1996 and would therefore be illegitimate; and

(ii) such an approach was impermissible under the rule laid down in Warriner v Warriner (2002) (LTL 24/1/2002).

HELD: (1) The introduction of H's evidence was an illegitimate attempt to subvert the Lord Chancellor's discount rate. It was the premise of the Order that the effects of inflation in claims for future loss were to be catered for solely by means of the multiplier, conditioned as it was by the discount rate. Accordingly the multiplicand was necessarily treated as based on current costs at the date of trial. The substance of the appeals constituted an illegitimate assault on the Lord Chancellor's discount rate and on the efficacy of the 1996 Act itself.

(2) Applying the ratio in Warriner (supra), this type of case did not fall within the exception in s.1(2) of the Act as meriting exceptional treatment.

Appeals dismissed.