Civil way: 3 February 2023

MIXED INJURIES, MIXED JUDGMENTS

At last. The Court of Appeal has spoken—two tongues to one—on the construction of s 3 of the Civil Liability Act 2018 (CLA 2018) (see ‘Civil way’, 171 NLJ 7924, p15). The question raised by the leapfrogged appeals in Hassam and another v Rabot and another [2023] EWCA Civ 19 was how the court was to assess damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity (PSLA) where the claimant suffers a whiplash caught by a tariff but also suffers additional injury which falls outside the scope of CLA 2018 and does not attract a tariff award.

The majority answer, adopting the claimants’ secondary case (with another win for Benjamin Williams KC) was that the court should assess the tariff award by reference to the Whiplash Injury Regulations 2021 (SI 2021/642); assess the award for non-tariff injuries on common