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WHAT IS DAMAGES? SPECIAL AND GENERAL

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Dictum

What then is damages generally? Damages are money claimed by or ordered to be paid to, a person as compensation for loss or injury. In other words, damages are the sum of money which a person wronged is entitled to receive from the wrongdoer as compensation for the wrong. General damages are damages that the law presumes follow, from the type of wrong complained of and do not need to be specifically claimed. While special damages are damages that are alleged to have been sustained in the circumstances of a particular wrong. To be awardable, special damages must be specifically claimed and proved.

– ARIWOOLA J.S.C. Union Bank v. Chimaeze (2014)

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DAMAGES ARE ALWAYS IN ISSUE

Damages are always in issue and so failure to deny them is not fatal: Re The Nigerian Produce Marketing Board v. Adewunmi (1972) 11 S.C. 111.

— Edozie, JCA. British American v. Ekeoma & Anor. (1994) – CA/E/60/88

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DAMAGES FOR SUFFERING, PAIN, ANXIETY SHOULD BE ASSESSED ON REASONABLE BASIS

Sellers, L. J. in Wise v. Kaye (1962) 1 All ER 257 and which states thus: “It has always been accepted that physical injury and the personal experience of pain, and also of suffering, including worry and anxiety for the future and apprehension of an operation, or of nursing or deprivation of activity owing to disablement or embarrassment or limitation felt by reason of disfigurement, cannot in any true sense be measured in money… Damages for such injuries, originally almost invariably assessed by juries, were said to be ‘at large’, and had to be assessed on a reasonable and fair basis between party and party. There can be no restitution for the loss of a limb or loss of faculty but the law requires adequate compensation to be assessed.”

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DAMAGES IN BUILDING CONTRACT

In Mertens v. Home Freeholds Company (1921),2 K.B. 526, where the Court approved the law on this point as stated in an earlier edition of Hudson. In that case the contractor had undertaken to build to the roofing and the Court held:- The proper measure of damages was what it cost the plaintiff to complete the house substantially as it was originally intended and in a reasonable manner at the earliest moment he was allowed to proceed with the work, less any amount which would have been due and payable by the defendant to the plaintiff, had the defendant completed the house to the roofing at the time agreed by the terms of the contract.

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ASSESSMENT OF DAMAGES IN BREACH OF CONTRACT

[A]s far back as 1854 in the case of Hadley v. Baxendale (1854) 9 Ex (Ch. 341, where at p. 354 of the Report, Alderson, B. expressed the law as follows: “Now we think the proper rule in such a case as the present is this: Where two parties have made a contract which one of them has broken, the damages which the other party ought to receive in respect of such a breach of contract should be such as may fairly and reasonably be considered either arising naturally, according to the usual course of things, from such breach of contract itself, or such as may reasonably be supposed to have been in the contemplation of both parties, at the time they made the contract, as the probable result of the breach of it.”

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PERSON CLAIMING DAMAGES SHOULD PROVE HE IS ENTITLED TO DAMAGES UNDER THAT HEAD

It is trite and well settled as rightly argued by the said counsel that:- the person claiming should establish his entitlement to that type of damages by credible evidence of such a character as would suggest that he indeed is entitled to an award under that head… See the cases of Oladehin v. Continental ile Mills Ltd (1978) NSCC, page 88 and also Imana v. Robinson (1979) NSCC page 1.

— C.B. Ogunbiyi, JSC. Ibrahim v. Obaje (2017) – SC.60/2006

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JUDGES SHOULD SET OUT HOW THEY ARRIVE AT QUANTUM OF DAMAGES

The quantum of damages does not now arise for consideration. We would only point out that the Judge did not record a finding as to the extent of the annual financial loss suffered by those whom he held to have been dependants of the deceased woman, or say how he arrived at the total sum awarded. It Is easier for an appeal court to decide whether the damages awarded can be upheld H it knows how they were assessed, and we hope that in cases of this kind judges will set out the reasoning by which they arrive at their final estimates.

— Brett JSC. Benson v. Ashiru (1967) – SC. 405/1965

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