Robert John Waters v Elaine Dalli

[2009] ACTSC 158

ROBERT JOHN WATERS v ELAINE DALLI
[2009] ACTSC 158 (4 December 2009)

DAMAGES – personal injury – man aged 61 – fractures to right femur, tibia and fibula – ankle dislocation – skin grafting – severe disabilities – total loss of earning capacity – no issue of principle

Malec v JC Hutton Pty Ltd (1990) 169 CLR 638

No.  SC 141 of 2006

Judge:             Master Harper
Supreme Court of the ACT

Date:              4 December 2009

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE     )
  )          No.  SC 141 of 2006
AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY )

BETWEEN:ROBERT JOHN WATERS

Plaintiff

AND:ELAINE DALLI

Defendant

ORDER

Judge:  Master Harper
Date:  4 December 2009
Place:  Canberra

THE COURT ORDERS THAT:

Judgment be entered for the plaintiff in the sum of $1,103,965.00.

1. This is an assessment of damages for personal injury.  The plaintiff was born in June 1944 at Maryborough in Queensland and is now sixty-five years old.  He was seriously injured on 17 May 2005 when the defendant’s car collided with his motorcycle at the junction of Mugga Way and Flinders Way, Red Hill.

The plaintiff’s background

1. The plaintiff was educated to the equivalent of the intermediate certificate.  After leaving school he moved to Melbourne where he worked for two years as a clerk with the Postmaster-General’s Department.  At seventeen he joined the Royal Australian Air Force, where he spent six years, being discharged as a corporal.  He married in Melbourne at age twenty.  In 1967 he came to the Australian Capital Territory and worked at the Honeysuckle Creek communications facility for about ten years.  A son was born in 1969 and a daughter in 1971.

2. In 1976 the family moved to Termeil where the plaintiff and his wife spent three years running a general store.  Thereafter the plaintiff spent a further three years working at Milton, Ulladulla and Wollongong, generally as a maintenance officer.  In 1982 he found work with a car dealer at Wollongong.  Thereafter he worked as a car salesman, with different dealerships in the Wollongong area and the Sutherland area of Sydney.  In 1995 he and his wife separated.  They were divorced the following year.  In 2000 the plaintiff moved to Townsville where he worked as assistant manager at a Mitsubishi dealership.

3. In early 2004 he came to Canberra for his brother’s wedding, and met his present wife.  She is twelve years younger than he is.  They were married in November 2004 and the plaintiff moved to Canberra.  He did a course and obtained a licence as a security officer, and took a position as a guard at an office building at Woden occupied by a Commonwealth department.

4. His wife at the time worked as a public servant during normal working hours, and in addition held a position as housemother at a boarding house at Canberra Grammar School.  The position provided accommodation, where the plaintiff and his wife lived.  She had Thursday and Friday evenings off but was otherwise on duty at the school other than during her public service working…