In a claim for personal injury you can recover damages for the injury itself (this is known as General Damages) and you can recover damages for any losses that you have incurred as a result of the accident (this is known as Special Damages).
In all personal injury claims you are under a duty to mitigate or minimise your losses. I will attempt to explain just what this means for you as a Claimant.
Say for example that you sustained injury due to a pothole in the pavement, you stepped in the pothole and unfortunately twisted your ankle and fell to the floor. You can recover General Damages for your injury (twisted ankle, bruising, cuts etc) and you can recover Special Damages for any losses that you may have incurred (damaged/torn clothing, unable to use your gym membership for a few months, lost earnings etc). With Special Damages it will often require some form of proof that you have suffered the loss – so where possible you should retain receipts and records.
So what is the duty to mitigate or minimise your losses? In terms of General Damages the duty to mitigate could include attending any physiotherapy to assist with your recovery. Physiotherapy may help in reducing the length and severity of your injury for example.
In terms of Special Damages the duty to mitigate could be using a bus to get to physiotherapy sessions rather than a taxi, if a bus is available and reasonable in the circumstances. Obviously this would be cheaper and you are therefore minimising your losses. This is a general example and obviously if for one reason or another a taxi is more convenient then you can still try and recover for this.
The other side (the Defendant) may query whether you could have used a local bus as a cheaper alternative. In terms of other Special Damages – say for example you had a gym membership which you could not use for say 3 months due to your injuries. If you paid a monthly fee for the gym and you were not bound by a 12 month contract (i.e. you were bound by a monthly contract rather than a 12 monthly contract) – you could mitigate this loss by not renewing your membership when the month that you had already paid for expired. This is a more complex example but you can see how you can minimise your losses.
This duty to mitigate and minimise your losses is aimed to stop Claimant’s incurring extra expense just for the sake of doing so. It should always be reiterated that you are not guaranteed to recover all the Special Damages that you claim for. If you cannot prove that a reasonable loss has been incurred then it will be difficult to recover that particular item of Special Damage. Therefore when incurring expense you should always keep receipts and records and you should always aim to keep your losses at a minimum.
