Under provisions of tort law, a victim can ask to be compensated for pain and suffering. So how does such compensation relate to something called “the Trilogy”? Someone that seeks to understand that relationship needs to become more familiar with tort law.
What is tort law?
In the language of the legal profession, tort stands for a wrongful act or the failure to act, upon seeing another person being harmed. Tort law deals with the commission or omission of such acts. It provides for issuance of an award to the victim. The award’s value should make it possible for the same victim to become “whole” again.
The specifics that deal with enforcement of such laws can differ from one legal system to the next. Three cases that came before the bench in Canada’s Supreme Court illustrate the type of changes that can be made in tort-related laws. The Court’s decision reflected the nature of the complaint made by the plaintiffs.
Each of the three different plaintiffs had objected to the huge award that had been granted to one of three separate victims. Each victim had been harmed by an act of negligence. The court studied the three cases and observed one missing piece, one that weakened the arguments made during each of the earlier trials.
It noted that at all three trials the lawyers on both sides failed to provide the jury with what the justices on the bench called an objective yardstick. In the absence of that means for making an objective judgment, the jury could not be expected to reach a fair verdict. In the absence of a fair verdict, the decision by the lower-court judge could not be supported by Canada’s Supreme Court.
How did the Court’s lack of support lead to changes in the law?
Today, almost all awards that go to victims of negligence in Canada must remain below a given cap. That includes the awards given for damages caused by pain and suffering. Still, there are times when a jury and judge can forget about capping the size of the amount that will be awarded to a plaintiff.
After all, there are other types of damage for which victims can request compensation. One concerns the cost of future care, which medical evidence suggests could be necessary. The other one relates to the cost of whatever income the victim’s skills and education would have allowed him or her to earn in an imaginary future, one that was not constrained by the presence of injuries.
The calculated figure for either of those would not be small. For that reason, the fact that the two types of damage have been exempted should please Personal Injury Lawyer in Milton. It also makes it obvious that a good attorney feels ready to focus on those particular damages, when helping a client to win what would seem to be a fair compensation.