138 / 330
GAZETTE
JUNE 1986
their mother. Not having similar provision made for
them after his death, they suffered a loss which could be
measured by the amount of payments made to support
the mother and enable her to travel with them"
14
.
Accordingly, the trial judge had allowed recovery to the
children in respect of that part of the father's
expenditure attributable to the mother's food, air-fares,
outings and electricity on the basis that the loss of same
was indirectly a pecuniary loss to the children. The
Defendants contended that the expenditure by the
father for the benefit of the mother was not properly
regarded as a provision made by him for the children,
that the discontinuance of such expenditure was not a
loss to the children, that account ought to be taken of
the fact that the family had lived on supplementary
welfare benefit up to the date of the trial and that the
mother had devoted the same care to them since the
father's death as she had done before. The Court of
Appeal
15
unanimously held that the children could
sustain a recoverable pecuniary loss from a change in
the mother's resources caused by her loss of the father's
support which resulted in a diminution of the care that
the mother could give them. Stephenson L.J. considered
that:
" The children are, broadly speaking, entitled to
enjoy the same material standard of life as they
would have enjoyed if their father had continued
to support them, and the Defendants are bound to
pay them enough to maintain them in the enjoy-
ment of that standard to which the financial
support of their father has accustomed them. That
may not be possible without maintaining their
mother in the same standard; by reducing her
standard of life you may necessarily reduce theirs.
If as a result of their loss of the father's support
this mother can no longer maintain them up to
that standard without compensation from the
Defendants, the compensation the Defendants
must pay them must be enough to enable her so to
maintain them, just as it would have to be enough
to enable a housekeeper or a grandmother to do so
if they had no mother. They have not lost those
services. Their father's death has not deprived
them of those services altogether but in so far as it
can be proved to have impaired those services it
has reduced their value; that reduction is their loss
and for it they are entitled to be compensated. I
agree with Cairns L.J. that this loss depends on (1)
the mother's care being diminished by the loss of
the father's support, and (2) the extent to which
she can be expected to be supported by supple-
mentary benefit."
16
.
However, Cairns and Stephenson L . J J ., considered
that as the mother would continue to obtain
supplementary welfare benefit in the future which was
intended to pay for her food and clothing the children
were not entitled to claim in respect of this item of the
cost of the mother's maintenance. Stephenson L.J.
pointed out that "social security benefit is not one of
the benefits which Section 2 of the Fatal Accidents Act,
1959 allows the court to ignore in balancing dependants'
gains against losses."
17
Graham L.J., the final member
of the court, who dissented on this point, would have
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