The High Court yesterday increased by £100,000 an award of £165,000 "general damages" made by the Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal to a 44-year-old married woman.
The result of the decision by the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Morris, is that the "cap" of £150,000 on general damages (referred to in a 1984 Supreme Court judgment) is lifted.
Mr Justice Morris said that in his view 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 woman was married at 18 and worked with her husband who was a milk delivery agent. She had three children. She received an injection of contaminated anti-D in June 1977.
Mr Justice Morris said the woman was misdiagnosed for a number of years and in 1992 was diagnosed as suffering from hepatitis. All this time she had been suffering from a variety of complaints. It was thought she was over-indulging in alcohol and various other causes were attributed to her problems.
The woman had recounted how in 1990 she had reached the end of her tether with a streptococcal throat which was not responding to treatment. She had devastating itchiness and rash. Dry eye, dry mouth, joint pains, depression, insomnia, swelling of the fingers, and loss of energy were her main problems.
Instead of being active in assisting her husband, she now concentrated her life on attempting to overcome the variety of complaints from which she suffered.
The judge accepted that the woman's life, quality of life and enjoyment of life had been ruined. She was aware, as she had put it, that "I could be possibly facing a premature death." There was uncontested medical evidence that the probable progress of her complaint was that in 10 years she would have established cirrhosis and then five years later decompensation. It would then be necessary for the woman to undergo a liver transplant operation. Even then there remained the problem of the same condition recurring.
The dangers of cirrhosis developing in the transplant was 15-20 per cent and of these a percentage go on to develop fibrosis.
The judge said the tribunal awarded £50,000 to the woman and her husband jointly in respect of loss of earnings.
It might well be that the tribunal considered the maximum award available to it in respect of personal injuries was £150,000. In Mr Justice Morris's view the cap on general damages to which the Supreme Court referred in a 1984 case and other cases had only limited relevance to an award of the type being made to this woman.
He said that apart from general damages, the £50,000 awarded to both husband and wife was relatively small together with a sum for out of pocket expenses past and present for travelling.
The 1984 finding was at a time of depression when interest rates were high and incomes, relative to the present day, small, said the judge. 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 own day-to-day 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.
He said the correct measure of general damages "for a lady whose life had been effectively ruined was £250,000." He said he did not propose to alter the award of £15,000 for journeys undertaken and to be undertaken in future.