Scottish Court of Session Decisions

In awarding the full sum claimed in the summons the jury were, in my opinion, giving what is known in our law as an excessive award. When I say so I adopt, as many of our predecessors have adopted, the standard laid down in the case to which we have been referred, and to which Courts have often been referred—the case of Landell v. Landell, 1841, 3 D. 819. I cannot express my view of the law better than it is done in the joint opinion of Lords Fullerton, Mackenzie, Jeffrey, and Murray, where they say—“It is clear that in order to warrant the application of the term ‘excessive’ the damages must be held to exceed, not what the Court might think enough, but even that latitude which in a question of amount so very vague any set of reasonable men could be permitted to indulge. The excess must be such as to raise on the part of the Court, the moral conviction that the jury, whether from wrong intention or incapacity or some mistake have committed gross injustice, and have given higher damages than any jury of ordinary men, fairly and without gross mistake exercising their functions, could have awarded.” Or to use the language in subsequent cases we are not entitled to set aside the jury's verdict on the ground of excessive damages unless the damages awarded are “palpably extravagant and unreasonable,” unless they are “outrageous,” unless “a palpable hallucination had come over the jury” (as Lord Jeffrey put it), or the award is “altogether so extravagant that no other jury would repeat it,” or unless we think “the verdict ought not to have been for more than one-half of the sum awarded.”

Now in this case I do not think the award should be for more than one-half the sum awarded. In short, I think that half the sum awarded would have been an extravagant verdict. But counsel for the defenders here have offered £100 as reasonable, and as we think this verdict cannot stand, counsel for the pursuer agreed in that event to accept £100. I think we should be doing justice here, and giving what is a reasonable award in the circumstances—and it is always a jury question what that is—if in respect of that offer and acceptance we fix £100 as a reasonable sum in this case. And in that view we shall not direct a new trial.

Lord Mackenzie—I am of the same opinion. Applying the law as it has been laid down in a series of cases, and especially as put by Lord President Inglis in the case of Young v. Glasgow Tramway and Omnibus Company, Limited, 1882, 10 R. 242, 20 S.L.R. 169, I am of opinion that the sum of £250 in the circumstances of this case is altogether so extravagant as that no jury would repeat it; that the jury in no view was entitled to return a verdict for more than one-half that sum having regard to the rank in life of the pursuer, to the wages he was earning, to his age, to the family that he had, and to the circumstances of the accident.

What exactly should be the sum to represent the solatium we might have a difficulty in fixing, but we have been relieved from the necessity of estimating the amount in consequence of the offer of £100 which has been made by Mr Sandeman on behalf of the defenders—an offer which was accepted by counsel for the pursuer conditionally upon our taking the view that the amount awarded was excessive.

Lord Cullen—I entirely concur.

Lord Anderson—I also agree.

Lord Skerrington was absent.

The Court discharged the rule and refused to grant a new trial, of consent applied the verdict, and in respect of a joint minute for the parties assessed the damages at £100 in the place of £250 contained in the verdict, and decerned against the defenders for payment to the pursuer of the said sum of £100.