A high Court judgment which increased an award to a woman infected with hepatitis C by £100,000 may have implications for up to 1,000 future compensation claims. More than 20 appeals against awards from the Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal are already before the High Court.
The judgment, which was the first of the appeals, also breached the cap on personal injury damages after 15 years. It is set to have implications for future serious personal injury cases.
The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Morris, increased by £100,000 an award of £165,000 "general damages" made by the compensation tribunal. The cap of £150,000 on general damages was referred to in a 1984 Supreme Court judgment.
People infected with hepatitis C are entitled to appeal to the High Court within one month of their compensation award. Other cases heard before the compensation tribunal was set up on a statutory basis may be appealed before this Friday to the High Court.
The average award paid out at the Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal is £140,000. So far, the tribunal has processed 1,207 claims, awarding £168.9 million. The highest award, to a haemophiliac infected with hepatitis C, was £1.6 million last year. The lowest was £200. In his judgment, Mr Justice Morris said it would "work a genuine injustice" in the woman's case to hold that the cap of £150,000, plus whatever consumer index increase would be appropriate, was the limit of damages which she could recover.
The 44-year-old married woman was infected with the virus through an anti-D injection in 1977. The judge accepted that her life and quality of life and enjoyment of life had been ruined. She was aware, as she had said, that "I could be possibly facing a premature death".
In Mr Justice Morris's view, the cap on general damages to which the Supreme Court referred in an 1984 case and other cases had only limited relevance. The 1984 finding was at a time of depression when interest rates were high and incomes, relative to today, small.
The rate of interest available on investments bore no relationship to the 1984 rates and the cost of property had multiplied since that time.
Mr Justice Morris said his experience dealing with infant settlements was the clearest possible test that the cap of £150,000 was no longer regarded as applicable by practitioners in the courts. The correct measure of general damages "for a lady whose life had been effectively ruined" was £250,000.