The Dubai Court of Cassation established an important legal principle which says that a victim's compensation should be on par with the loss suffered, provided the damage is a direct result of the error.
The ruling is a result of an accident case filed by the daughter of a Zayed University employee against a car driver and an insurance firm. She requested the court to order the driver and insurance firm to jointly pay Dh2.2million plus an interest of 12 per cent from the date of the accident as her mother was still in coma due to the driver's mistake.
The Court of First Instance had ruled the defendants to pay Dh750,000. But both the plaintiff and the insurance company appealed against the verdict.
Then the Court of Appeals amended the Court of First Instance's ruling and added Dh10,000 to the compensation and reduced the intrest rate to five per cent.
But the plaintiff appealed the verdict before the Court of Cassation. The court issued the new ruling considering multiple facts such as the amount already spent on the victim, which totalled to more than Dh900,000; the future cost of treatment etimated at Dh792,000 per year; as well as the fact that the victim lost her job and therefore, a wage loss of Dh2.04million calculated based on an annual salary of Dh157,000 until her retirement.
The Appellate Court based its ruling on the text of Articles 282 and 292 of the Act of Civil Transactions, which stipulates that the compensation should be estimated according to the damage the victim suffers including future loss.