Volume 1

Report / Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury.
Date:
1978
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Report / Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    113/568 (page 95)
    413 The question of possible remarriage after the trial raises rather different issues, which would take on a new aspect if our majority proposals for periodic payments (set out in chapter 14) were adopted. 414 We were unable to devise any very satisfactory solution to this problem; and we are almost equally divided on what should be done. We are, however, all agreed that, whatever changes are made, the same approach should be adopted for widows and widowers. Some of us think that periodic payments should cease automatically on remarriage, without further reference to the courts, and that a dowry should become payable, perhaps in the form of a lump sum equivalent to five years’ compensation. 415 Others of us consider that the disadvantages of terminating compensation are such that it would be better to allow continued over compensation in some cases. Those who take this view believe that, if compensation were terminated, the need to preserve equivalence between periodic payments and lump sums could present serious difficulties. In order not to discourage widows and widowers from accepting periodic payments, it would be necessary to take account of marriage prospects in assessing the lump sum; and this would involve the courts in precisely the kind of speculation which the present law was designed to avoid. The termination of periodic payments could act as a disincentive to remarriage; and it would be necessary to devise a review procedure capable of monitoring changes in marital status. This might be thought objectionable, and it would certainly add to the administrative complexity of periodic payments. Moreover, if provision were made for periodic payments to terminate on remarriage, it would, under our proposals, be open to a widow contemplating remarriage to apply for commutation of her future periodic payments, in the hope of obtaining more favourable compensation in the form of a lump sum. 416 Mr Marsh and Professor Schilling are unable to align themselves with either of the two points of view. They think that Parliament in the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1971 was concerned with the unseemliness of estimating a particular widow’s chances of remarriage for the purpose of assessing a lump sum payment. Whether a periodic payment should be made when a spouse has in fact remarried is in their view an entirely different question. If, as their colleagues think, a lump sum in respect of future loss of support should not be awarded to a widow who has remarried before trial, they consider that similarly it is hard to justify a periodic payment at a time when the widow is known to have remarried. The other view put forward — that periodic payments should cease on the spouse’s remarriage but that a kind of ‘dowry’ equivalent to five years’ periodic payments should be awardable — appears to them to be arbitrary. They admit that it is desirable, if no account of a particular individual’s marriage prospects is to be taken when assessing a lump sum for a spouse’s future loss of support, that the choice of a periodic payment, which would cease on remarriage, should not by comparison be unattractive. They do not think there is any easy solution to the problem, but to either of the views put forward by their colleagues they would prefer a formal test of remarriage prospects based on the age of the spouse at the time of the other spouse’s fatal accident; the correct ages for this purpose would depend on the national statistics of LS