Personal Injuries
PERSONAL INJURIES:
New Guidelines Applied by the High Court When a Garda Motorbike Rider Suffered Multiple Injuries in a Road Traffic Accident
The new personal injury guidelines, introduced in April 2021, replace the Book of Quantum, which was used to put a value on compensation awards to plaintiffs. These guidelines relate to general damages or a general award for pain and suffering to include continuing pain and suffering into the future.
The courts will now identify the injury, or main injury in a multiple injuries case, and use the Guidelines to ascribe a value to such injury depending on which category of injury it belongs to, as set out in the guidelines.
Awards have reduced in the last few years, but a recent High Court case Illustrates how the court can still award substantial damages while carefully adhering to the guidelines.
The plaintiff, a Garda motorcyclist was thrown into the air, following a road accident, and suffered quite serious injuries to his left arm and wrist. He also had other serious injuries to his testicles, inner thighs, chest, and ribs. He had extensive surgery, was dependent on his wife for most tasks, and suffered mental distress.
The plaintiff was quite industrious about attending physio sessions and rehabilitating himself, and made a slow recovery from his bone injuries, despite residual and permanent weakness in both limbs and a curtailment in his lifting abilities. He was also left with nasty scars after his surgery.
The issue before the court was general damages and the judge said that this had to be done by reference to the Personal Injury Guidelines. The judge said his task was to identify the most serious injury and the bracket of damages to which that clearly belonged. His second task was to uplift or increase that award to compensate the plaintiff for pain and suffering arising from his lesser injuries.
The judge stated that each injury, in a multiple injuries case, must be fairly assessed and have a value allocated. However, following that, the judge must step back from those individual injuries and their values to evaluate, in the round, the cumulative effect of all the injuries on the plaintiff and to adjust the final award to avoid under or overcompensation. An overlap of injuries must therefore be taken into account.
The court noted the trauma of the accident and permanent scarring and disfigurement of his arms, together with some residual weakness that affected his job, and these should all be taken into account.
The judge found his most severe injury was to his left arm and the court valued his main injury at the lower end of €55,000 to reflect the plaintiff’s marked recovery.
In respect of his lesser injury, the right wrist, the court valued this at €42,000 thereby placing it between the moderate and serious categories of wrist injury. His other soft tissue injuries, and individual bruising of his chest and ribs were valued at €3,000. The total awards amounted to €100,000.
Finally, the judge looked at the discount factor where injuries may overlap and could be treated together. As both arms had been injured, he applied a modest discount of €15,000 and therefore awarded general damages of €85,000 to the plaintiff.
Keogh v Byrne [ 2024] IEHC 19.