PI Brief Update

Knauer: Supreme Court Allows Appeal: Multiplier Runs From Date of Trial - Gordon Exall, Zenith Chambers & Hardwicke

02/05/16. The Supreme Court gave judgment in Knauer -v- Ministry [2016] UKSC 9. The court allowed the appeal.  The multiplier in a fatal accident case now runs from the date of trial/assessment and not the date of death. This means that fatal accident awards will now be higher.  There is a greater incentive on defendants to settle cases earlier.

THE JUDGMENT

The court held that the use of the Ogden Tables means that the approach to multipliers is now more scientific. The concerns that governed the previous House of Lords decisions on this point were to a large extent alleviated.

Now the multiplier runs from the date of assessment and not the date of death. In the Knauer case itself this meant that the widow received an additional £50,000.

DISCUSSION OF PREVIOUS DECISIONS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS

12. If this is now so obvious, why did the House of Lords reach a different conclusion in Cookson v Knowles and Graham v Dodds? The short answer is that both cases were decided in a different era, when the calculation of damages for personal injury and death was nothing like as sophisticated as it now is. In particular, the courts discouraged the use of actuarial tables or actuarial evidence as the basis of assessment, on the ground that they would give “a false appearance of accuracy and precision in a sphere where conjectural estimates have to play a large part”. Hence “[t]he experience of practitioners and judges in applying the normal method is the best primary basis for making assessments”: Lord Pearson in Taylor v O’Connor [1971] AC 115, 140. Rather like...

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