BOOK REVIEW
JUDICIAL COLLEGE GUIDELINES FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF GENERAL DAMAGES IN PERSONAL INJURY CASES
Includes Guidance on 10% Uplift
14th edition
Foreword by Lord Justice Irwin
Compiled for the Judicial College by Mr Justice Langstaff, Peter Carson, Stuart Mckechnie, Steven Snowden QC and Richard Wilkinson
ISBN: 978 0 19881 452 8
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
www.oup.com
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“TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD AND MORE ESSENTIAL THAN EVER”
An appreciation by Elizabeth Robson Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers and Phillip Taylor MBE, Head of Chambers
and Reviews Editor, “The Barrister”
A decision some twenty-five years ago by the Judicial Studies Board established a working party to prepare the original Guidelines for the judiciary. As Lord Donaldson said, the Guidelines were “not intended to represent, and does not represent, a new or different approach to the problem” of how to assess general damages, especially where no two cases are ever precisely the same.
Today, in 2017, Lord Justice Irwin says in his Foreword that Donaldson’s view is now “a voice from a different era” concerning the assessment of damages. The reason being that the judges now will only from time to time be called on to take a decision on assessment because it is no longer “one of the commonest tasks of a judge sitting in a civil court” and working out the assessment level.
As Irwin LJ concludes, it is the case now that the real dispute on quantum lies elsewhere. He writes that “the argument as to the level of damages for pain and suffering will usually be an incidental issue in a case where the decisive matters are liability, the nature of a care regime, disputed contributory negligence or something more technical”.
And all this is down to one factor- “these Guidelines have operated to diminish hugely the incidence of unsettled arguments as to damages for ‘PSLA’ (pain, suffering and loss of amenity)”. The guidelines have settled the law and given us an admirable service in the past and the new edition continues to give us the best information available for assessments and how we arrive at them.
As a passing final thought, Irwin LJ mentions both the Jackson reforms and the proposals on “whiplash”. Both areas have fallen victim to the dominance of Brexit matters in Parliament and the June election. However, the future is catching up with all of us fast. The question posed is will the reforms and “whiplash” get Parliamentary time?
We hope the answer is “yes” for the same piece of draft legislation will be essential for the enactment of the electronic civil court by means of the ‘Online Procedure Rules’ which Irwin rightly describes as “an essential part of the Courts’ Reform programme. He ends ominously with these words- “the cliched Chinese curse of life in interesting times sounds less hackneyed than usual”. Donaldson and the JSB grasped the nettle 25 years ago with these Guidelines so there should be no excuse!
So, you and your practice need this guide if you are involved in any aspect of personal injury work. We hope that other suitable guides will be published by the Judicial College and OUP in the future (for instance, online courts) because they make our working lives much easier as practitioners and they are a boon for unrepresented parties as well.
These guidelines were published as a 14th edition on 28th September 2017.
