Claims (January 01, 2009)

PSYCHOSES RELATED TO PHYSICAL BRAIN INJURIES NOT ‘TOO REMOTE FOR RECOVERY’

Pychoses caused by right-hemisphere brain damage arising from a car collision are not “too remote to allow for recovery,” the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has found, distinguishing the case from the facts found in the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Mustapha.

InChinsang v. Bridson, the Ontario court denied a motion by the defendant, Christopher Bridson, to find injuries sustained by Michael Chinsang in a car collision “too remote to allow recovery.”

Chinsang suffered neck, chest, arm, leg, back and head injuries when involved in a motor vehicle accident on Apr. 2, 2001. A jury found Chinsang had also suffered from memory loss, elevated anxiety and increased depression.

A jury awarded Chinsang almost Cdn$1 million in damages — including Cdn$150,000 in general damages for pain and suffering, lost income of Cdn$43,000 and special damages for future loss of earning capacity of Cdn$800,000.

Bridson asked the judge to overturn the jury verdict on the basis that the psychoses suf- fered by Chinsang were symptomatic of depression or schizophrenia and therefore were not related to the effects of the collision.

But Ontario Superior Court Justice Peter H. Howden distinguished the facts in Chinsang from Mustapha. “The case before me has no resemblance to a unique reaction based on a highly individual constellation of psychological attributes such as that of Mustapha, where no physical injury occurred at all,” the judge wrote.