Assessing General Damages
General Damages is compensation for loss of quality of life such as pain and suffering. Not all injuries are severe enough to obtain general damages.
Under the Civil Liability Act 2003, general damages are calculated by working out an Injury Scale Value (ISV). The ISVs are set out in the Civil Liability Regulation 2014.
Under the ISV system, injuries are assigned a point value between zero and 100, where zero relates to an injury not severe enough to justify any award of general damages and 100 is the most severe injury possible.
The ISV system aims to promote:
- consistency between assessments of general damages for similar injuries; and
- similar assessments of general damages for different types of injuries that have a similar level of impact on an injured person.
Calculating your ISV
To calculate your ISV, you can refer to the following sections of the Civil Liability Regulation 2014 :
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Schedule 3 – for instructions on working out the ISV for an injury
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Schedule 4 – for calculating the ISV points to be allocated for an injury
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Schedule 7 – for calculating the dollar value of ISV points
For further information about how to work out an ISV or general damages for your injury, contact the insurer or your solicitor (if you are legally represented).