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13 November 2014 / David Regan
Issue: 7630 / Categories: Features , Personal injury
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The Ogden conundrum

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When & how should the Ogden reduction factor be discounted, asks David Regan

The calculation of damages for future loss in cases of personal injury can never be an exact science. Chancery colleagues frequently shudder at the broadness of the brush applied even to the most sizeable awards. However, a degree of approximation is inevitable in cases of tortious loss—ungoverned by contract—stretching from years to a lifetime into the future. This can only be only magnified by the youth of the claimant, or the uncertainty of their future condition, likely career path or care needs.

Future loss

For more than 20 years, the court has used the Ogden tables as a basis for calculating awards for future loss. The tables provide a multiplier which takes account of mortality, corrected for age and sex, and the rate of return, discounted for accelerated receipt. The tables do not of course determine the claimant’s precise life expectancy, but are based on the mean life expectancy of those in the relevant population group. They have been a very

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