General Damages for Vestibular Injuries and Dizziness

General damages for vestibular injuries compensate damage to the balance system of the inner ear and to the brain pathways that interpret it. The claimant is dizzy, unsteady or subject to spinning attacks, and the symptom is invisible to everyone else. Courts assess these claims on objective vestibular testing where it exists and on the record of what the dizziness stops the claimant doing.

The Common Vestibular Diagnoses After Trauma

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, where displaced crystals in the inner ear produce short violent spinning on head movement, is diagnosed by a positional test and often treated successfully with a repositioning manoeuvre. Labyrinthine concussion, vestibular hypofunction, canal dehiscence and persistent postural perceptual dizziness behave differently and can last for years. The diagnosis matters to the award because BPPV that resolves after two treatments is a short lived injury, while unresolved hypofunction is permanent. A treating vestibular physiotherapist who names the diagnosis and records the response to treatment is the most useful witness in these files.

Objective Testing Separates These Claims From Ordinary Symptom Reports

Videonystagmography, rotary chair testing, caloric testing and posturography produce measurable results, and a vestibular physiotherapist’s assessment records balance performance in numbers. That evidence takes the claim out of the category defence counsel treat as purely subjective. Where the testing is normal but the symptoms persist, the claim is still available, and it is proved the way chronic pain is proved, through consistency and function.

General Damages for Vestibular Injuries Reflect a Loss of Ordinary Safety

Dizziness removes confidence in basic movement. Claimants stop driving, stop working at height, stop carrying a child on stairs and stop cycling. Falls are the practical danger, and older claimants face real fracture risk from them. Courts compensate the constant caution the condition imposes as well as the attacks themselves. Where the dizziness is triggered by busy visual environments, the claimant may avoid shops and crowds entirely, and that withdrawal belongs in the evidence. Awards for permanent vestibular dysfunction sit well above awards for positional vertigo that clears in weeks, and the decisions are published on CanLII.

Vestibular Symptoms Overlap with Head and Ear Injury

Dizziness after a head impact is frequently attributed to concussion when the source is the inner ear, and the two are treated differently. Inner ear trauma often damages hearing at the same time, which is covered in the hearing loss chapter, and visual disturbance travels with it, as set out in the vision loss chapter. Persistent dizziness with daily headache is assessed together with the chronic headaches chapter analysis. The firm builds vestibular evidence early on car accident files, and the guide’s opening chapter explains the series.