General Damages for Hip and Pelvis Injuries

General damages for hip and pelvis injuries are among the highest awarded for a single joint, because the hip carries the body’s weight and a damaged one shortens how far a person can walk for the rest of their life. Pelvic fractures add consequences that reach well beyond walking. This chapter states what courts weigh, and the rest of the series is indexed in the general damages guide.

Pelvic Fractures Are Graded by Stability

A crack in one part of the pelvic ring with the ring otherwise intact usually heals with rest. A fracture that breaks the ring in two places is unstable, needs fixation, and carries damage to the structures the pelvis protects. Serious pelvic trauma damages the structures the ring protects. Bladder and bowel injury, nerve damage to the legs and long term sexual dysfunction all follow from it. Courts compensate these consequences within general damages, and evidence about them is given reluctantly, so counsel has to raise the subject rather than wait.

Age Decides What a Hip Replacement Means

A replacement joint has a service life. In an older person it may outlast them. In a person in their thirties it will need revision, probably more than once, and each revision is a major operation with a worse result than the one before. That prospect is what separates a high award from an ordinary one, and it is proved by an orthopaedic opinion about the number of revisions to expect.

Fractures Through the Joint Surface Bring Early Arthritis

An acetabular fracture damages the socket the femoral head sits in. Even after good fixation, the cartilage has been injured, and post-traumatic arthritis frequently follows within a few years. The same is true of a femoral neck fracture in a young person, where the blood supply to the head can fail and the bone collapses. Both outcomes are foreseeable results of the original trauma and belong in the claim from the beginning.

General Damages for Hip and Pelvis Injuries Are Measured in Distance and Stairs

Courts ask practical questions. How far can the person walk, how long can they sit, can they manage stairs, can they drive, do they still sleep through the night. Answers to those questions place the injury against the reported awards more reliably than any label. Pelvic and hip injuries are typical of the firm’s pedestrian accident files, where the impact loads the pelvis directly. The lower limb below is covered in the knee and leg chapter and the lumbar spine above in the back injuries chapter. Reported awards are searchable on CanLII.