Court awards R5 million to Cape Town mother of boy injured in car accident

A mother has been awarded R5 million in damages from the RAF. A mother has received a significant boost in her fight for justice after being awarded a payout of over R5 million from the Road Accident Fund (RAF). The compensation, ordered by Western Cape High Court Judge Matthew Francis,is the result of a tragic incident that left her then-three-year-old son with permanent disabilities and disfigurements after he was knocked down by a car.

The award includes compensation for 100% of the costs of the future accommodation of the boy in a hospital or nursing home, treatment, rendering of services, or supplying of goods to him arising from the collision of June 9, 2013. While the court found that the agreed expert classification of the boy’s injuries was “mild” at the time of the accident, Judge Francis said the permanent cognitive, behavioural and developmental consequences in a child injured before he had begun school are substantial and lifelong. “An immature brain injured before the acquisition of language, scholastic and social competencies may sustain diffuse damage that is clinically mild yet developmentally decisive, because the injury does not merely impair an existing faculty but compromises the acquisition of faculties not yet formed.

“The disabling consequence is therefore latent at the time of injury and emerges only as the child is required, year on year, to do what the injury has rendered him less able to do. It follows that, in the assessment of general damages for a brain injury sustained in early childhood, the severity label attached to the primary injury does not govern the enquiry and imposes no ceiling.