Compensation involves paying and receiving. Damage is compensated because damage has been done to another person, and the recipient, by receiving compensation, is put in a position as if the damage had not been done. The causer repairs what was damaged through his fault.
Determining extent of personal injury
Determining the amount of damages is sometimes very simple. The damages awarded by a collision caused damage is generally determined by the amount of the repair bill. As damage, what it costs to repair the damage must be reimbursed.
In personal injury cases, determining the extent of damages is often more difficult. Damages to health generally do not allow themselves to be determined with mathematical accuracy. Moreover, the same injury does not have the same impact on everyone. Someone who plays the guitar as a hobby will be more severely affected by the loss of two fingers of one hand than someone who spends their free time exclusively reading. Damage to health thus has a strong individual dimension. It is different from an injury to one's car.
Determination of future damages
But there is more. What about the victim who is permanently disabled at work due to the injury and is then dependent on a disability benefit? The difference between wages and those benefits is easily calculated, but important questions remain. In the imaginary situation in which the injury had not been inflicted upon him or her, would the individual have been able to gain promotion or find a better-paying job? Such a development lay in a future taken away from the victim by the person causing the injury. A fair division of the burden of proof takes this into account. While it is the victim who must prove his injury, it cannot be the case that the causer benefits from the victim no longer being able to prove with absolute certainty what results he could have achieved in life.
Determination of damages children
Most difficult is the situation of the child who suffered serious injury at a young age. For example, the child who suffered at the birth suffered brain damage due to medical error. That child was deprived of a full future. How should it be estimated what life would have been like without the medical error? In practice, this is done by using parents, brothers and sisters as benchmarks. Of course, this does not lead to absolute certainty about what the child in question could have achieved in life, but it is a way of arriving at a just solution.
Good decency
Compensation is not a lottery ticket. Nothing is won. The higher the compensation, the worse the misery the victim has been put into by the fault of the perpetrator. Compensating damages merely repairs what has been lost.
Compensation for damages is a legal duty of the party causing those damages. In a broader sense, it is also a matter of solidarity. As a society, we should consider it important that compensation for victims' damages be done properly and fairly. It was my mother who taught me that I should ring the bell of the neighbor whose window was shattered by my soccer. Common decency?
If you have questions about this blog, please contact the author, John Beer.