Judge considers meaning of "impecunious" in a credit
hire case
Where a claimant's car is damaged by the negligence of the
defendant, the damages recoverable by the claimant for the loss of
use of the car would be the basic hire rate of the replacement car.
However, damages may be higher if the claimant is impecunious and
can only hire a car with credit terms (see eg Lagden v O'Connor
[2003]). One of this issues in this case was what is meant by
"impecunious". In Lagden v O'Connor, the
test was set out as follows: "what it signifies is inability
to pay car hire charges without making sacrifices the plaintiff
could not reasonably be expected to make".
In this case, at first instance it had been held that the
claimant was not impecunious because she could have bought a
replacement car of the value of the one which was written off by
depleting her accounts which were in credit and spending up to her
credit card limit. Turner J has now held that the judge was wrong
to
