Jobling v Associated Dairies

Facts

Jobling was injured at work through the negligence of his employers, Associated Dairies Ltd. The injury was to his back and reduced his earning capacity by about half. Some years later, and unrelated to the accident, he developed a disease of the spine which left him totally unable to work. He claimed damages for loss of earnings from the date of the disease to the end of his working life, arguing that the employers were liable for the whole of the loss resulting from their initial wrong.

History

The claim for loss of earnings after the onset of the disease was rejected in the courts below, and Jobling appealed to the House of Lords.

Issue

Whether a tortfeasor remains liable for loss of earnings that continues after a supervening, non-tortious illness which would itself have caused the same incapacity, and whether the court should follow the earlier decision in Baker v Willoughby [1970] AC 467 that a subsequent tort did not reduce the damages for the first.

Held

Appeal dismissed. The damages for loss of earnings had to take account of the supervening disease, so the employers were not liable for the loss of earnings after it began.

Ratio

• Where a supervening, non-tortious event such as an illness would in any event have deprived the claimant of the earnings lost through the tort, damages for the loss of earnings must be assessed taking that event into account.
• The earlier decision in Baker v Willoughby, which allowed full damages in spite of a supervening tort, was not to be extended to a supervening natural illness.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• The purpose of damages is compensation for actual loss, and the court should not ignore events which prove that the loss would have occurred regardless of the tort.
• It would be unjust to treat a claimant who suffers a natural illness differently from one who did not, as the effect of treating the later illness as irrelevant would be to place the claimant in a better position than he would have been without the tort.
• Baker v Willoughby depended on special reasoning about successive torts and the claimant's entitlement to be compensated for the loss of function caused by the first, and that reasoning did not extend to a disease.

Obiter

• Their Lordships expressed doubts about the reasoning in Baker v Willoughby and the difficulty of reconciling the treatment of a supervening tort with that of a supervening illness, without deciding whether it should be overruled.

Where it fits in the module

On the FHS topic of damages and causation, Jobling raises the question of how later events affect the assessment of loss caused by a tort, linking the but-for test to the principle of compensation. It frames the contrast between a supervening natural event and a supervening tort, discussed in Baker v Willoughby [1970] AC 467 and later in Rahman v Arearose Ltd [2001] QB 351, where the court apportioned damages between successive causes. The case thus engages the question whether the law's treatment of the vicissitudes of life is coherent and whether the claimant or the defendant should bear the risk of intervening events.

Criticisms

• The distinction between a supervening natural illness and a supervening tort is difficult to justify, because in each case the claimant's loss is the same and the first tortfeasor is no less responsible.
• Reducing damages for a later illness gives the defendant a benefit from misfortune, and the claimant is left without compensation for a disability the defendant caused.
• The rule rests on the view that compensation is for actual loss, but the tort has already depleted the claimant's earning capacity so that the later disease takes away something already damaged.
• The treatment of Baker v Willoughby leaves the law uncertain, because the House criticised the case but did not overrule it, and the boundaries of the exception remain unclear.