Lucas v Motor Accident Commission No. DCCIV-98-1129

LUCAS -V- MOTOR ACCIDENT COMMISSION
[2000] SADC 1129/98

HIS HONOUR JUDGE HUME
CIVIL

Introduction

This is a claim for damages for personal injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident. Both liability and quantum are in dispute.
It is common ground, however, that the subject accident occurred at about 1.45 p.m. on the 17 July l996; that the plaintiff was a passenger in the front passenger seat of a l990 Nissan Skyline Sedan being driven by her husband Graham Lucas in a northerly direction towards Salt Creek; that in the rear seat of the car the couple’s twin children, a boy and a girl a little over five years of age, were seated in the back seat on booster seats, the girl Chantel behind her mother and the boy behind his father; that everybody in the vehicle was wearing a seat belt; that at a point of approximately 5 kilometres south of Salt Creek the vehicle left the roadway in a westerly direction, that is to the left hand side of the road, struck an embankment and overturned, finishing up on its wheels; that in the course of that overturning the plaintiff suffered a fracture and dislocation of the talus bone of her right ankle.
That injury has had, and will continue to have, severe consequences for the plaintiff, but I shall turn first to the question of liability.

Liability

In paragraph 3 of the Amended Statement of Claim the plaintiff pleads, in substance, that Chantel cut her finger on a soft drink can and that Graham Lucas, whilst continuing to drive, reached for a bandaid and gave it to the plaintiff, who swivelled in her seat in the process of applying the bandaid to her daughter’s finger.
In the process she was jolted, lost her balance and fell onto the left arm of her husband. After that Graham Lucas lost control of the vehicle and left the western side of the carriageway, collided with an embankment and overturned and that in the course of that overturning the plaintiff sustained her injury.
The defendant is substituted for Mr Lucas subject to s.125A of the Motor Vehicles Act, l959 (as amended).
By its pleadings, the defendant denies that the plaintiff fell onto the arm of her husband as alleged; but asserts that immediately prior to Mr Lucas losing control of the vehicle, the plaintiff accidentally grabbed control of the steering wheel of the vehicle causing it to leave the carriageway and collide with the embankment.
The defendant pleads contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff on several bases:- that she grabbed the steering wheel; alternatively fell onto her husband’s arm; attempted to apply a bandaid from her position in the front seat; failed to tell her husband that she was going to apply the bandaid from that position; attempted to apply a bandaid whilst the vehicle was travelling at about 95 kilomtres per hour; failed to ask her husband to slow or stop the vehicle; was not complying with the requirements of the Road Traffic Act as to the wearing of seatbelts; failed to take any or sufficient care for her own safety.
(It is not contested, and I find, that the speed limit was 110 kilometres per hour in the area of the accident.)
By her reply the plaintiff denies negligence and specifically denies that she grabbed the steering wheel; avers that she did fall onto the left arm of her husband but not as a result of her own negligence; that her husband handed her the bandaid and that it was implicit in that act that he knew what she was going to do with it; and avers that she was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident.
The facts fall within a very small compass and the events within a very brief period of time. Obviously, the only people who could give evidence as to the events immediately leading up to the accident were the plaintiff and her husband. There were no independent witnesses (of course apart from the children). It is trite to say at the age of five, now at the age of nine, their evidence could be of no assistance at all. There is some independent evidence in the observations of Mr Russo, who was a police officer and attended at the scene, but that was only as to physical observations of marks on the verge and observations as to the vehicle. I shall turn to his evidence shortly.
I say at the outset that I was most impressed by the plaintiff’s evidence and indeed by the plaintiff. I accept her evidence as to the circumstances surrounding the accident as being honestly and directly given. She gave her evidence on matters which she could remember firmly and directly, and was frank about matters in which her memory may not have been accurate. That conclusion which I reach applies to the whole of her evidence. With respect to the accident, her evidence-in-chief is at page 19 of the transcript and following to page 24. I refer to that evidence, but for the purposes of this judgment I summarise it. Her recollection was that Chantel asked for a drink and that she (the plaintiff) happened to have a can of soft drink in her hand. She turned in her seat, stretched her arm towards the back of the car and her daughter stretched her arm towards the front of the car and the plaintiff gave Chantel the can. The plaintiff said she then returned to the forward facing position in her seat, that Chantel started crying and said that she had cut her finger. That was a few minutes after the drink had been handed. At that stage Chantel was crying. The plaintiff turned and saw some blood on her daughter’s hand. At this stage she was swivelled with her bottom on the base of her car seat, her right leg tucked up behind her left calf. She asked her husband if he had a bandaid because he “always had bandaids tucked away somewhere”. (they are not her direct words). She remembered her husband reaching towards the centre of the car with his left hand. She then said (tr. 22.26) “I just remember being thrown off balance. I just remember sort of having a jerky sort of movement and then not much after that; I do remember bits about the car rolling”.
(At tr. 22.30 to tr. 33.11:-)
Q.     So you remember the jerky sort of movement
A.     Yes.
Q.     What happened to you as a result of that.
A.     Well, I went towards Graham and then got flung back into my seat
after that.
Q.     At that time, which way were you actually facing.
A.     I was still swivelled around, I was more or less facing Graham.
Q.     Do you remember now whether or not you actually had a bandaid in
your hand, or anything like that.
A.     No, I honestly do not remember actually even getting the bandaid
now at all, nor do I remember applying it to Chantel’s finger. As
far as I can remember, that didn’t happen; but, I mean, it’s four
years ago now, that part of it. I don’t remember ever actually
getting the bandaid.
Q.     You remember falling onto Graham.
A.     I remember having contact with Graham’s arm, yes; I remember
sort of just leaning on him and then falling back.”
The plaintiff said that she had no recollection of grabbing the steering wheel. She has flashes of memory of the vehicle rolling over and of the children screaming and herself screaming but does not really remember anything clearly until the vehicle came to a stop.
The plaintiff agreed (tr. 51.22-.25 and following) that to enable her to turn to attend to her daughter the plaintiff pulled her seatbelt from a point approximating her left shoulder to loosen it to enable her to turn. It is not in dispute that the seatbelt was of the common inertia reel type.
Whilst admitting that the passage of time may have made her memory defective, and acknowledging that the pleadings, which she assumed, as it must be, were drawn on her instructions, she remained firm in her recollection that there was some sort of jolting of the vehicle which caused her to come into contact with her husband’s left arm. Clearly that is not pleaded in paragraph 3 of the Statement of Claim. But I accept that her present recollection is honestly given. Importantly she remained adamant that she did not grab or touch the steering wheel. (tr.57.13 cross-examination).
Mr Lucas was not clear in his recollection of events surrounding the accident. It was understandable, not only because of the lapse of time but because it was plain to me, that he was concerned with guilt, and the responsibility of the risks to which he had put his children, and the harm which had come to his wife as a result of his driving. Re-reading his evidence my impressions of him in the courtroom were reinforced on that point. In examination -in-chief his recollection was so imperfect as to be unreliable. That is not in a sense that I believe he was attempting to mislead me, but because his evidence was confused between recollection and reconstruction. That is plain upon looking at the whole of his evidence in chief about the immediate events (tr.69.9-72.30). (That passage was in effect the entirety of his examination-in-chief on the crucial aspects relating to liability).
The conclusion to which I have come with respect to his evidence-in-chief is reinforced to a very significant degree by his evidence in cross- examination when, without any discourtesy, Mr Lovell for the plaintiff probed the distinction between the plaintiff’s recollection and what would appear to me to be reconstruction. I do not think it is necessary to go into great detail. That evidence commences at tr.72.32.
It is important in my view to note the final question to Mr Lucas and his answer on the topic of liability (81.19-81.25).
Q.     Is this the position; as far as you can remember you had returned both your hands to the steering wheel, you could not see anything, and the car just went off the roadway.
A.     Well, that is the way you have described it, it is not I mean I don’t recall exactly what the sequence of events occurred to cause us to go into a rollover”,
and it is significant to note an earlier passage (79.28-30):-
Q.     You knew there was an injured child in the back.
A.     I guess.
Q.     Why didn’t you slow down or stop.
A.     In hindsight obviously I wish I had done that.”
That question and answer might well reflect the emotional impact of the events upon Mr Lucas’ recollection of them.
The objective evidence of (now) Conrad James Russo, a former police officer who had been given a radio tasking to attend the scene of the accident is probably the only objective evidence. I do not need to go into it in detail. It appeared from it however, that the stretch of roadway from where the accident occurred was straight for about a kilometre and the accident occurred about halfway along that length. Mr Russo observed tyre tracks on the dirt verge to the western side of the carriageway approximately ten to fifteen metres in length. It was his opinion as an experienced country police officer they were not skid marks but simply tyre marks and that there were no tyre or skid marks on the bitumen surface of the roadway. It was his evidence that the angle of the tyre marks was a shallow one and they terminated where the left tyre track hit a large rock in the embankment in the rest of the carriageway. It appeared to him that from that point the vehicle in which the plaintiff was a passenger overturned and rolled until it came to rest. It was his view (xxn 92.7) that the vehicle driven by Mr Lucas had not been subject to braking after it left the bitumen surface and simply left the bitumen surface leaving tyre marks rather than skid marks. It was his evidence that the distance between the western edge of the bitumen and the point where the embankment commenced was approximately one car’s width.
In the course of discussion with counsel during the course of submissions on the question of liability I confess to being intrigued with the sophistries of causation.
However at the end of the day I think my interest was not justified.
Mr Day, in his helpful address, suggested that given the facts which were obvious as I have found, I should be concerned as to whether Mr Lucas manoeuvred his vehicle whilst searching for the bandaid causing the plaintiff to fall against his arm. He said the question of reliability of the plaintiff’s evidence, and that of the defendant on the basis that they were bound to have discussed the matter, and that there was no prior statement by the plaintiff to police or anybody else as to the circumstances surrounding the accident. It was suggested that the thread of the plaintiff’s evidence was that her husband’s manner of driving had caused her to overbalance to come into contact with his arm and that that was the triggering factor which led to the loss of control of the motor vehicle and it overturning. He suggested that I should make the finding that the plaintiff in fact did grab the steering wheel of the vehicle. Jamieson v. Graham (1995) 22 Motor Vehicle Reports 97 (Qld); Franz v. Allen (1996) 26 Motor Vehicle Reports 492 (W.A.F.C.). As Mr Day conceded, those cases are distinguishable. In this case I make the finding that I am not satisfied of the defendant’s allegations that the plaintiff grabbed or interfered with the steering wheel in any way.
The ultimate conclusion to which I come is that on the balance of probabilities Mr Lucas was distracted by the events within the vehicle he was driving and allowed his attention to be diverted whilst he attempted to assist his wife in administering help to Chantel. As a result of that, he inadvertently allowed his vehicle to veer to the west of the bitumen surface of the roadway. As a result it struck the large rock in the embankment and overturned causing the injuries to his wife. Despite being distracted by the intricacies of the causation in arguendo, I think upon reflection that is the only conclusion to which I can come.
Mr Lovell, for the plaintiff, relied as a fall back upon the recent decision of the High Court in Schellenberg v. Tunnel Holdings Pty. Ltd. [2000] H.C.A. 18 (13 April 2000) an as yet unreported decision on the doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquiter. Mr Lovell suggested I do not need to rely upon the doctrine. I agree.
Standing back from the evidence it is quite plain to me that the issues are very simple. The only decision in my view which can be reached in the light of the evidence is that the driver of the vehicle, Mr Lucas, was driving in a manner which fell below proper standards of care. Once the domestic emergency became apparent he should have stopped, as he admitted. He should not have continued to drive at 90 to 95 kilometres per hour, even though the speed limit was 110. He should not have allowed himself to reach for a bandaid, where ever it was in the vehicle, whilst continuing to drive. He should not have allowed his vehicle to drift from the bitumen carriageway onto the dirt verge. I conclude that, simply, he allowed his attention to be diverted from his proper standard of care as a driver, and that the accident occurred as a result. To use the classic pleading terms he failed to exercise proper control over his motor vehicle, he failed to stop, slow, swerve or otherwise manoeuvre his motor vehicle to avoid the accident which ultimately occurred.
Whilst in ordinary human terms one must have sympathy for Mr Lucas’ reaction to the situation in which he found himself, I must find negligence against him.
The defendant has raised a pleading of contributory negligence against the plaintiff on the basis that she did not wear a seatbelt in accordance with the regulations. There is no question on the whole of the evidence but that the seatbelt which the plaintiff was wearing was properly fastened. The only question on the facts which I find, is that she loosened the seatbelt to turn around and attend to her daughter by stretching the inertia reel device by pulling at the seatbelt from a point near her left shoulder. Further points of alleged contribution which have been mentioned are the allegation of grabbing the steering wheel, which I find did not occur, falling onto the arm of the insured, which I think on the probabilities, accepting the plaintiff’s evidence, did happen; but more generally in attempting to administer to her child without telling her husband that she was going to do so, in what can only be concluded was a manner obvious to him.
As to the seatbelt allegation, I cannot find it sustained. The inertia reel seatbelt is designed to do precisely what the plaintiff did with it on this occasion. The implications around which the Road Traffic Act l96l revolve are distinguishable in the sense that the seatbelt worn by the plaintiff was properly fastened. Its very design is to allow slow movement which in my view is obviously for the purpose of moving with some limitations about the vehicle. I cannot support that allegation of contribution.
Considering the whole of the evidence, I do not think that the general allegations of contributory negligence can be made out. I think that a person in the plaintiff’s position in the circumstances which applied at the time would reasonably conclude that Mr Lucas had acted in the way he did by obtaining and passing to the plaintiff the bandaid whilst continuing to drive, had the vehicle under proper control and was exercising due care. I do not think that the plaintiff was careless of her own safety in the circumstances.
The defendant’s claim for contributory negligence is therefore dismissed.

Damages

There is no material dispute about the injuries sustained by the plaintiff in the accident nor, indeed, about its impact upon her. Before proceeding to those topics it is necessary to give some summary of the background of the plaintiff.
She was aged 41 at the time of trial and was 37 at the time of the accident. She had attended St Mary’s College for Education and successfully completed her fourth year at high school level, that is the present equivalent of year 12. She had previously applied for work with the Bank of New South Wales, now Westpac, and obtained it doing work in the areas of data entry and ledger machining. She worked in that area for about four years. She was promoted to a branch as an examiner and subsequently at other branches as teller. In that area of banking activity she became leading teller for about two years. She then went on relieving work at various branches in metropolitan areas doing telling work or examiner’s work. She was promoted further, dealing with general ledgers and supervising the work of other employees at a couple of locations. At that level she was working in an ambulatory way for about 60% of her time. She had married in l985 and was pregnant when she left the bank to have her children. She left on 17th December l990 after exactly 15 years as a bank employee. The children were born in April of l991. She took 12 months maternity leave but at the expiration of that period resigned in pursuance of a decision between her husband and herself that she should stay at home with the children in their younger years. When her children were about four years of age in l995, she obtained work at Football Park in a kiosk. It was on about one day a weekend over the approximate period of league matches held at Football Park at that stage. That was obviously work where she was standing and walking. In February l996 she went back to Westpac as a part time “proof operator”. That work involved processing cheques after branches had closed, and it was largely sedentary. Her hours of work with the bank were from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. on Fridays and from 3.30 p.m. to 8.00p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays her children went into after school care but her husband was able to look after them on Fridays. That was her employment situation at the time of the accident.
The accident itself was, of course, a traumatic experience. The injuries which she sustained were extremely serious. As I have said there was little contest about them. She suffered a fracture dislocation of the right talus in her ankle. The exhibits make the severity of that injury plain. The talus is the pivotal bone of the joint between the tibia in the lower leg and the foot. It has an hemispherical portion which acts as a pivot, a neck which makes contact with the joints and long bones of the foot and at its lower extremity there is a joint called the subtalar joint which impinges on the heel bone or calcaneus. It is not contested that the fracture which the plaintiff sustained was across the talus at the point where the hemispherical portion of that bone is formed with the neck of the talus.

In the plaintiff’s case the fractured portion of the bone was dislocated to the rear. As appears from the evidence, damage was done to the fibrous tissues supporting the bearing surfaces between the talus and the tibia and the talus and the calcaneus.
The plaintiff tendered evidence by way of reports from Dr Stephen Graves, an orthopaedic surgeon, Mr Malcom Wicks, an orthopaedic surgeon, and from Mr Goerge Dracopoulous, an orthopaedic surgeon who specialises in disorders of the foot and ankle. Mr Dracopoulous gave oral evidence.
The defendant tendered evidence by way of report from Mr Brian Cornish the eminent orthopaedic surgeon who had examined Mrs Lucas at the request of the defendant’s solicitors and had access to documentary material.
It is my view that, apart from semantic differences which are minor, the specialists concur. I place reliance on each of them in coming to my findings of fact, but I confess that I am most reliant upon Mr Dracopoulos. I had the benefit of seeing him and hearing from him. He is a singularly impressive witness, able to convey information about his particular field of interest in a vivid form and one which is easily understood by lay people such as myself.
I give a brief history of the treatment which the plaintiff underwent. She was taken to the Meningie Hospital shortly after the accident. She was then conveyed to the Royal Adelaide Hospital on the day of the accident. She was operated upon with an open reduction and fixation of the fractured portion of the talus which was dislocated and, obviously, relocated during the operation. Her low leg was supported by a plaster splint. She spent five days in hospital and found that an unpleasant experience. She describes herself as having been in a lot of pain. Her leg was elevated. She subsequently had a full plaster on her lower leg and foot. She was given pethidine and morphine for pain relief and was discharged from hospital with crutches. She was severely incapacitated for the first few weeks after her discharge and required assistance with her personal maintenance and hygiene which was given by her husband who took several weeks away from work and, as far as her household work was concerned, she was helped by not only her husband but her mother and a cousin. She had her plaster removed after about six weeks and was allowed to weight bear after eight weeks. She needed two crutches and one crutch, towards the end of the period, for about three months. It was painful for her to use her ankle when she started weight bearing. She went back to work at Westpac whilst still using crutches on 16th August l996 on reduced hours. She returned to normal hours on 11th October l996 as appears from Exhibit P3. Substantially she has continued on October l996 until the time of trial at that rate of work. She copes with that work but uses anti-inflammatory medication to reduce pain.
As far as her Football Park work is concerned she did not return until l997 as a supervisor at the kiosk. Similarly she relies on anti-inflammatories to help her perform those duties. She is obviously on her feet for most of the days that she is working at Football Park. Except for a few minor exceptions she has only done one day at a time.
As far as her work at Westpac is concerned, as a Union Representative, she was able to give evidence as to what had been expressed to Westpac employees as to their future in the area of work in which they were involved. As part of the rationalisation of the bank resulting from increasing technological capacities, opportunities for employment in the telling area is diminishing rapidly; the opportunities for employment in the area of work which the plaintiff was involved is diminishing to the point where the plaintiff is of the view that she will be retrenched by the bank and she will need to amplify her computing skills in order to obtain alternative employment. I accept that view as the likely scenario of people in her position with the bank.
Since her return to work the plaintiff has undergone an arthroscopy at the hands of Mr Wicks to the right ankle. He was unable to complete that procedure successfully and resorted to an open arthrotomy of the ankle joint. He noted “marked osteophyte formation around the anterior talus and tibia. Narrowing of the joint space with marked osteoarthritis involving both of the bones”. Mr Wicks debrided the joints, removed the screws from the talus, and excised the osteophytes from the talus. The plaintiff was away from work in connection with this procedure for about fourteen days. In general terms the plaintiff experienced no broad improvement from the procedure performed by Mr Wicks.
It is the opinion of all the medical practitioners from whom evidence was received that at a stage in the future the plaintiff will require a fusion of the ankle. The opinion of Mr Dracopoulos is that will be something in the order of ten years time. It was his view that the fixation of her ankle would be made necessary by increasing degeneration over that period of time from the present to the point where she would be unable to tolerate the pain which would have increased until the need for an operation becomes overwhelming.
As far as damages for non-economic losses are concerned it is obvious that the plaintiff has suffered considerable pain and discomfort and will do so to an increasing degree until an operation is performed to fix her ankle and joints. After that she will be left with a rigid joint and, although in Mr Dracopoulous’ opinion she may after that develop some increased mobility in the joints of the bones in the foot itself in partial compensation, she will effectively be left with her foot fixed at right angles to her lower leg. This will be a situation which will obviously have an impact upon her mobility not only so far as any employment is concerned, but also in her day to day activities and her domestic activities.
She has scars. There is pigmentation, which I observed, about her right ankle. That is not the subject of any dispute. It results from the operations the plaintiff has had. There is a heavily pigmented scar about three or four inches long on the front of her is blue in colour and varies to about a quarter to three eights of an inch over the length of the scar. It is noticeable. She has a less pigmented scar to the back of her ankle about two or three inches in length. The plaintiff is fairly stoic about those scars but she is conscious of them as not being particularly attractive, although she does not try to hide them.
I consider that the injuries sustained by the plaintiff are serious, and their consequences will continue to be serious.
Doing the best I can to fit her injury into the scale provided for by s.35(a) of the Wrongs Act, I assign the number 15. The multiplier for the relevant time was $1,520.
I have been provided with figures which assist me in making an assessment of the plaintiff’s past economic losses. I think it is impossible to make an accurate assessment under that heading. Some sickness benefits were paid. Doing the best I can I fix a lump sum for past economic losses of $2,500.
It is agreed that on present day figures the cost of an athrodesis of the plaintiff’s ankle, including hospital fees and the cost of the surgeon, surgeon’s assistant and an anaesthetist would be approximately $5,000. I think that is as near as I am reasonably able to come. Counsel agree that if that were the figure the net present value for the purpose of this assessment would be $3,500 and I fix that sum.
The head of damage which gives the most concern is the question of an assessment for future economic loss. It is obvious that there are many contingencies which will apply. The perhaps inevitable retrenchment, for example, from Westpac, the difficulties in the labour market for a woman of the plaintiff’s age, now 41, with a history of injuries, and the situation of the labour market.
Against those adverse contingencies however, must be balanced the positive ones. It is quite plain to me that the plaintiff is a resourceful woman and a quietly determined person who is likely as her children grow up to obtain further qualifications and to obtain future employment in some form or another. It may be, if her physical disabilities increase that she is unable to continue with the work she enjoys at Football Park, but her skills and experience as an operator of computers may well be advanced with her determination. It is plain to me that she will apply her determination to a similar end.
This aspect of the assessment can be nothing but imprecise.
I should make the basis of my reasoning clear, however.
It is my view that the plaintiff would have been likely to have increased her earning capacity as her children matured, just as she is now likely to do. Her post accident capacity is much less than her pre-accident capacity, however. She would probably have worked in similar fields to that of her present employment, such as office management in accounting areas, on a part time basis at first, but increasing hours as her children became older. Whilst, as I have said, she is likely to pursue that path, her capacity to do it, and her opportunity to obtain that work, have been reduced by the injuries she has sustained and the consequences of them. In present terms, I think that she has lost a proportion of something in the order of an earning capacity of $25,000 per annum after tax against her present capacity of about $17,000 after tax (see Exhibit P2), a loss of earning capacity of about $155 per week after tax.
Using the tables in Luntz “Assessment of Damages” (3rd Edition) and assuming a retiring age of somewhere shortly after 60 years of age, but certainly before 65 years, which I believe likely, I have multipliers within the range of 548 and 604. She will, in addition have to take six months away from work for her operations. The contingencies largely balance each other in this case, but some allowance must be made for adverse contingencies. I assess the plaintiff’s loss of future earning capacity as $85,000.
In addition to future loss of earning capacity and the cost of the arhtroscopy an allowance must be made for ongoing medical expenses. It is plain on the evidence that she will require special shoes. The cost of those it would seem by the agreed special damages, to be about $265. They may require orthotic inserts. It is impossible to be accurate at this stage about the length of life of those shoes and appliances but they may be required less than annually and will be required by the whole of life. I think that the proper basis to approach this matter and I acknowledge it is a rough assessment on the basis that she will incur those costs at the rate of $500 a year. I deal with that as $10 per week. The whole of life multiplier for a woman of her age is $878. In addition she is currently spending about $3 or $4 per week on anti-inflammatory drugs and needs to see her general practitioner to get a prescription for those.
I think an allowance under this separate head of $6,500 is proper. Adding the present value of the cost of the future operation - $3,500 - I allow the sum of $10,000 for future medical expenses.
I make an allowance of $2,500 for Beck v Farrelly damages.
Special damages are agreed at $10,023.74 but a credit must be given for $2,735.20 already paid.
In summary, I award
Non Economic Loss  $22,800.00
         Past Economic Loss   2,500.00
         Special Damages   10,023.74
         Beck v Farrelly   2,500.00
         Loss of Future Earning Capacity            85,000.00
         Future medical expenses    10,000.00
Total       $132,823.74
The defendant will receive credit of $2,735.20.
I will hear the parties as to costs.
I publish my reasons.

[2000] SADC 85

6 July 2000