General Damages for Internal Injuries

General damages for internal injuries compensate harm to the organs inside the chest and abdomen, together with the surgery that harm forces and whatever the body is left unable to do afterwards. The visible wound is often small or absent, so these claims are proved almost entirely on imaging and operative records. This chapter states what courts look at when they value them.

What the Court Treats as an Internal Injury

The category covers organ damage instead of bone or soft tissue. A ruptured spleen, a lacerated liver, a perforated bowel and bruised lungs all sit here, as do internal bleeding and the abdominal wall damage a seatbelt can cause in a high speed collision. Courts also treat the loss of an organ as its own permanent harm, separate from the pain of the injury that removed it. Removal of the spleen, for example, leaves a lasting vulnerability to certain infections, and that vulnerability is compensable even in a claimant who feels well.

General Damages for Internal Injuries Follow the Permanent Consequences

Two claimants can arrive at hospital with the same abdominal trauma and leave with very different claims. The one who recovers fully after a single operation is compensated for a frightening period of acute pain and a surgical scar. The one left with bowel adhesions, a hernia repair that keeps failing, dietary restriction or an ostomy is compensated for a permanent change in daily life. Reported awards for internal injuries with permanent consequences run substantially higher than awards for organ trauma that resolves, and the reported decisions are published on CanLII.

The Evidence That Proves an Internal Injury

Operative reports carry the most weight, because a surgeon describing what was found and what was removed is contemporaneous evidence no defence expert can talk away. Imaging supports it. The gap that costs claimants money is the record of life afterwards: the diet that had to change, the lifting that is no longer possible, the follow up surgery scheduled and then postponed, the holiday cancelled around a hospital date. That record comes from family doctor notes and from the claimant’s own account, and it needs to be built while it is happening, instead of reconstructed before trial.

How Internal Injuries Combine with Other Claims

Internal trauma rarely arrives on its own. It travels with the broken ribs and pelvis covered in the fractures chapter and with the surgical scarring assessed separately from the injury underneath. Where the trauma came from a crash, the mechanism matters to liability rather than to the general damages figure, and the firm runs those car accident claims with no fee unless the claim resolves. The guide’s opening chapter explains how the whole series is arranged.