General Damages for Brain Injury in Atlantic Canada

General damages for brain injury cover the widest range of any injury in the reported cases, because the injury itself ranges from a bruise that heals to the loss of the person someone was. The award turns on what function is gone and whether it is coming back. This chapter states how courts place a brain injury on that range, and where the guide covers the rest of the head.

Severity Is Measured by Lost Function, Not the Scan

A scan can look clean while the person cannot hold a job, and a dramatic scan can accompany a good recovery. Courts therefore ask what has changed. Memory, concentration, judgment and personality are the usual casualties, and evidence about them comes from neuropsychological testing and from the people who lived with the injured person before and after. The gap between the two versions of the person is what the award measures.

General Damages for Brain Injury Reach the Cap at the Catastrophic End

The Supreme Court of Canada capped general damages in 1978, in the trilogy led by Andrews v Grand and Toy Alberta Ltd, at $100,000 indexed to inflation since. A severe brain injury that ends independent living is the kind of case the cap was built for, and awards at that level run at or near the indexed ceiling. Moderate injuries with permanent cognitive change sit below the cap but still well into six figures in the reported cases. The trilogy is on CanLII.

The Award Reflects Insight, Which Brain Injury Can Take

A cruelty of severe brain injury is that the person may not know what they lost, while a person with a moderate injury knows exactly. Courts have wrestled with both. The modern approach values the loss objectively and uses the money to make the injured person’s life more livable, whatever their awareness of it. Family evidence carries unusual weight for this reason.

Where This Chapter Ends and the Concussion Chapter Begins

Most head injuries in crash litigation are mild traumatic brain injuries, and those have their own chapter on concussion, because the caselaw treats persistent concussion symptoms as a distinct problem. Brain injuries are common in the firm’s motorcycle accident files, where helmets reduce but do not remove the risk. If a family member’s personality changed after a crash, that observation belongs in the claim from the start.