It has long been recognised that a plaintiff can recover his or
her own damages to the reasonable extent of domestic care which has
been provided to the plaintiff as a result of injuries sustained in
the relevant accident.
The law relating to this head of damage, which is often referred
to as Griffiths v Kerkemeyer damages, has been fine-tuned
over time, but is now generally well understood.
Much more recently, the law relating to damages for the
plaintiff's loss of the ability to provide care to others has
evolved very quickly, and continues to do so.
Principles
The ability for a plaintiff to seek these damages is laid out in
section 15B of the Civil Liability Act. The section says
that the Court needs to be satisfied that the plaintiff had been
providing domestic services to the dependant before the onset of
the plaintiff's incapacity. It is also a requirement that the
dependants cannot be capable of performing those services
themselves.
