The Gazette 1986

GAZETTE

JUNE 1986

may not be possible without maintaining their mother in the same standard; by reducing her standard of life you may necessarily reduce theirs. If as a result of their loss of the father's support this mother can no longer maintain them up to that standard without compensation from the Defendants, the compensation the Defendants must pay them must be enough to enable her so to maintain them, just as it would have to be enough to enable a housekeeper or a grandmother to do so if they had no mother. They have not lost those services. Their father's death has not deprived them of those services altogether but in so far as it can be proved to have impaired those services it has reduced their value; that reduction is their loss and for it they are entitled to be compensated. I agree with Cairns L.J. that this loss depends on (1) the mother's care being diminished by the loss of the father's support, and (2) the extent to which she can be expected to be supported by supple- mentary benefit." 16 . However, Cairns and Stephenson L . J J ., considered that as the mother would continue to obtain supplementary welfare benefit in the future which was intended to pay for her food and clothing the children were not entitled to claim in respect of this item of the cost of the mother's maintenance. Stephenson L.J. pointed out that "social security benefit is not one of the benefits which Section 2 of the Fatal Accidents Act, 1959 allows the court to ignore in balancing dependants' gains against losses." 17 Graham L.J., the final member of the court, who dissented on this point, would have

their mother. Not having similar provision made for them after his death, they suffered a loss which could be measured by the amount of payments made to support the mother and enable her to travel with them" 14 . Accordingly, the trial judge had allowed recovery to the children in respect of that part of the father's expenditure attributable to the mother's food, air-fares, outings and electricity on the basis that the loss of same was indirectly a pecuniary loss to the children. The Defendants contended that the expenditure by the father for the benefit of the mother was not properly regarded as a provision made by him for the children, that the discontinuance of such expenditure was not a loss to the children, that account ought to be taken of the fact that the family had lived on supplementary welfare benefit up to the date of the trial and that the mother had devoted the same care to them since the father's death as she had done before. The Court of Appeal 15 unanimously held that the children could sustain a recoverable pecuniary loss from a change in the mother's resources caused by her loss of the father's support which resulted in a diminution of the care that the mother could give them. Stephenson L.J. considered that: " The children are, broadly speaking, entitled to enjoy the same material standard of life as they would have enjoyed if their father had continued to support them, and the Defendants are bound to pay them enough to maintain them in the enjoy- ment of that standard to which the financial support of their father has accustomed them. That

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