LAM YIN MEE AND ANOTHER v. LAU WAN AND OTHERS

H.C.A. No. 4848, 1983

Fatal accident - "lost years" claim on behalf of estate of young

female worker - Appropriate multiplier

In the case of a fifteen year old female worker killed in an accident the same multiplier, namely sixteen, should be adopted for a "lost years" claim on behalf of her estate under LARCO as would be in the case of a male worker of the same age. (LAU Kam-fook v. HO Hon-por 1983 H.K.L.J. 429 not followed)

H.C.A. No. 4848, 1983

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG

HIGH COURT

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BETWEEN

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JUDGMENT

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1. Miss Lam Pek Chi ("Miss Lam") was killed on the afternoon of 26th October 1980 when the bicycle she rode came into collision with water-tank vehicle Registration Number CE 7151, driven by the 1st Defendant, Mr. Lau Wan, near Tai Po. At the time of her death, she was aged fifteen.

2. The present negligence action is brought by Miss Lam's father, Mr. Lam Yin Mee, who is the administrator of her estate, against the driver of CE 7151, the driver's employer which at the material time was the 2nd Defendant, and the 3rd Defendant who was the registered owner. Damages are claimed by Mr. Lam on behalf of himself and his wife as dependant parents under the Fatal Accidents Ordinance Cap. 22 ("FAO") and on behalf of the estate for "lost years" and loss of expectation of life under the Law Amendment and Reform (Consolidation) Ordinance, Cap. 23 ("LARCO"). There is also a claim for funeral expenses, as well as for some items of Miss Lam's personal property such as her clothing, watch and a gold necklace which were damaged in the accident.

3. The 26th October 1980, being a Sunday, was Miss Lam's day off work. She went with two of her friends to hire mini bikes in Tai Po for a recreational ride. Those friends were Mr. Lee Kwok Leung (P.W.5), then aged twenty-one, and Miss Au Lai Ching (P.W.6), then aged seventeen.

4. They rode off together to Tai Mei Tuk, where they rested a while before heading back for Tai Po. The route they took back to Tai Po was via Ting Kok Road which has a cycle track running alongside the main carriage-way.

5. By about 3 p.m., their route along the cycle track brought them underneath a temporary bridge or fly-over where they rested a while. Ahead of them from there lay a temporary road which served as the entrance to a construction site known as the Wai Kee Construction Site. That temporary road was more or less at a right angle to Ting Kok Road, and cut straight across the cycle track.

6. Various estimates ranging from 30' to up to 150' were given in evidence for the distance between the bridge and where that temporary road started to intersect the cycle path. I do not know what the precise distance was, but it is clear from the photographs tendered in evidence that it was at the very least 70', and probably a good deal more.

7. Miss Lam travelled along the cycle track to the junction with the temporary road.

8. The 1st Defendant had driven his lorry CE 7151 from Tai Mei Tuk towards Tai Po. Heading in the same direction as the group of cyclists, he drove along the stretch of Ting Kok Road running parallel with the cycle track. Having passed the temporary bridge, he turned left into the temporary road and drove across the cycle track.

9. As the 1st Defendant drove his vehicle across the cycle track, his vehicle and Miss Lam's bicycle came into collision. As the result of that collision, Miss Lam received injuries rendering her unconscious, and causing her death later that afternoon.

10. Everything I have said so far about the circumstances of the accident was clear beyond all sensible dispute.

11. The sphere of genuine factual dispute narrows itself down to how Miss Lam conducted herself as she rode along the stretch of cycle track between the bridge and where the collision occurred at the junction with the temporary road, and to how the 1st Defendant managed his vehicle as he turned left from the main carriage-way, and drove across the cycle track.

12. A peculiar feature of the present case is the onus of proof. Instead of the Plaintiff having to prove his case against the 1st Defendant, it is incumbent upon the 1st Defendant on a balance of probabilities to show that he was not negligent. This comes about because the 1st Defendant has been convicted of careless driving in the incident giving rise to the present proceedings. Therefore, S.62 of the Evidence Ordinance, Cap. 8, comes into play, reversing the normal onus of proof.

13. It is instructive to consider how that conviction came about. The 1st Defendant, who was represented by a solicitor, was tried by a magistrate on a charge of dangerous driving causing death. At the close of the prosecution case, the magistrate amended the charge to one of careless driving. The evidence of carelessness disclosed by the prosecution case came from Mr. Lee Kwok Leung and Miss Au Lai Ching who described how, as Miss Lam rode her bicycle along the track, the 1st Defendant's vehicle made its left turn when Miss Lam was very close to it. Mr. Lee Kwok Leung described Miss Lam as being about 3 to 4 feet away when the vehicle turned. (The magistrate noted his estimate of the distance pointed out by the witness as being 7 or 8 feet). Whichever it was - 3 to 4 feet or 7 or 8 feet - the moving vehicle sounds to have been alarmingly close to the moving cyclist.

14. Against the background of the evidence given against him by the prosecution witnesses, the 1st Defendant admitted the amended charge of careless driving when it was read over to him by the learned magistrate.

15. At the time of admitting the charge, the 1st Defendant had a good understanding of what careless driving means (see p.169 of my record), and he also had the benefit of the advice of his solicitor.

16. Now the 1st Defendant comes to court and claims that when he made his turn there was no cyclist between the junction and the bridge. According to him, he checked the cycle track very carefully before turning, found no one there, so drove across it. Moreover, he described how he could see well with the mirrors on the near side of his vehicle, and claimed he saw no cyclist between his vehicle and the bridge as he drove across the cycle track.

17. Asked then to explain why he pleaded guilty to careless driving, the 1st Defendant advanced as his reason that his solicitor advised him to do so. That purported explanation really raises more questions than it answers. One naturally ask oneself "Why would the solicitor advise a plea of guilty ?" The answer presumably is "Because of the instructions he got from his client." It simply does not make sense for a solicitor to advise a client to plead guilty unless the client has communicated information to the solicitor showing guilt. Lord Diplock has remarked in Hunter v. Chief Constable of West Midlands⁽¹⁾ the uphill struggle in practice faced by those seeking to overcome the presumption raised by a conviction. That uphill struggle is bound to be at its most arduous for those who have unqualifiedly admitted their guilt. The apparently disarming explanation "I did it on the advice of my solicitor" is really no explanation at all.

18. If the 1st Defendant's description of the elaborate precautions he took while turning left is true, then it is a total mystery how the accident could have occurred at all. According to him, he sounds to have had an uninterrupted view of the cycle track as he turned and there were no cyclist riding along it. Yet amazingly, Miss Lam managed to collide with his vehicle and get run over by it as there was a tyre mark on her clothing. The only hypothesis consistent with the careful precautions claimed by the 1st Defendant would be that Miss Lam must have ridden full tilt at breakneck speed from the bridge to the intersection as his vehicle passed. Perhaps an Olympic cyclist on a racing bike might have been able to achieve that feat, but I would regard it as beyond the capacity of the ordinary teenage, female, weekend cyclist astride a mini bike.

19. However, there appears to be some corroboration for that hypothesis in the evidence of Mr. Choi Lung Wing, a fellow worker of the 1st Defendant at the construction site. From where Mr. Choi was supervising his gang of workers in the middle of Ting Kok Road, he was able to look past the intersection of the temporary road and the cycle track as far as the bridge. According to what he told the magistrate during the 1st Defendant's criminal trial, he did not see any cyclist between the intersection and the bridge when the 1st Defendant's vehicle turned left into the temporary road. However, his opportunity for observation seems, to some extent, to have been impaired by a cloud of dust raised by the 1st Defendant's vehicle as it turned. Moreover, Mr. Choi's version became somewhat modified when he gave his evidence before me. He referred to seeing cyclists riding out from under the bridge as the vehicle turned. I got the impression that Mr. Choi could not really remember whether he had seen cyclists riding between the bridge and the vehicle as it turned.

20. The version of the accident given by Miss Lam's cycling companions, Mr. Lee and Miss Au, to me seemed inherently more probable than the 1st Defendant's version. Instead of Miss Lam suddenly appearing on the scene in some mysterious way from nowhere, Mr. Lee and Miss Au have her cycling ahead of them along the track as the 1st Defendant's vehicle starts to turn. Their evidence boils down to saying that Miss Lam was either at the intersection or very close to it as the 1st Defendant's vehicle made its turn. The inference from their evidence is that the 1st Defendant either failed to see Miss Lam due to inadvertence, or else he made an error of judgment, allowing his vehicle to drive too close to her. At the end of the day, I reached the conclusion that Mr. Lee and Miss Au had been witnesses who tried to tell the truth. Although I was satisfied they were honest, I also realised they were not always accurate. There were discrepancies between them, and neither of them had, at all times, been consistent in his or her version of events. Each of them had made two statements to the police, namely on the day of the accident and on the 12th December 1980. Besides that, each of them gave evidence in the magistrate's court on the 26th May 1981, and, of course, also gave evidence before me. Thus, there were ample opportunities for discrepancies. Any lawyer is likely to have a field-day when examining witnesses about an event almost four years ago when those witnesses have given several statements about it in the past. The fact that there are discrepancies is not sufficient to lead to the conclusion that these are dishonest witnesses. When out of a clear blue sky a terrible disaster suddenly strikes, it is too much to expect that ordinary teen-agers will make wholly accurate observation, no matter how honest they are. The passage of time is also bound to cause distortions to the ordinary layman's powers of recollection. The courts from long experience are well aware of the frailties of human memory, and the courts are under no illusion about the artificialty of asking lay witnesses to estimate distances, times, and to show the relative positions of vehicles and people when particular events happened. The court has to try to take a broad, common sense attitude in the same way the jury does in assessing matters of fact.

21. Mr. Lee's and Miss Au's description of the 1st Defendant's vehicle turning too close to where Miss Lam was on her bicycle at the intersection impresses me as basically convincing.

22. Whether Miss Lam was stationary as the vehicle turned or whether she was still riding forward I did not regard as of any great significance. From Miss Au's evidence it sounded, first of all, a if Miss Lam was moving forward as the vehicle turned, but then stopped at the entrance to the intersection, whereas Mr. Lee in his evidence in chief claimed she was stationary as the vehicle turned. It turned out that Miss Au in her statement to the police on the 12th of December 1980 had said that she had not noticed whether Miss Lam had stopped, and in the magistrate's court Mr. Lee had stated that Miss Lam was cycling towards the vehicle as it turned. There was also the matter of Mr. Lee's statement of the 26th October 1980 where he had stated he was not sure whether Miss Lam's bicycle was moving or had stopped. There is no way the court can reconcile all those statements. It would be a pointless, exercise to try. This is simply the sort of confusion and contradiction that one finds amongst even the most honest witnesses.

23. After weighing all the evidence at the end of the day, I was not prepared to accept the 1st Defendant as a witness of troth. Not only did I find his evidence less inherently probable than that of the evidence of Mr. Lee and Miss Au, but I also formed an unfavourable impression of him from my observations of him in the witness box. I did not think his evidence about having stopped before turning left in order to allow a private car to leave the construction site rang true. I do not think there ever was any such private car as he described. The impression I got was that the private car was an invention on his part to enable him to show what an ultra-cautious driver he was. He wanted to make out that having halted completely, he then crept into the temporary road at a snail's pace.

24. I have no doubt that he drove into the site slowly - all the witnesses agree on that - but I do not think he went in quite as slowly as he wanted the court to believe. I found Mr. Choi Chung Wing's description of how the 1st Defendant's vehicle entered the temporary road as the most likely. Instead of creeping along next to the kerb of Ting Kok Road as the 1st Defendant described, Mr. Choi had him moving out to the fast lane of Ting Kok Road so that he could swing into the temporary road. To me, that sounds a much more natural way for a lorry to turn than the way the 1st Defendant sought to describe it.

25. Taking what is, I trust, a robust, common sense attitude I am satisfied the 1st Defendant's negligence caused this accident. He cut across the cyclist's bows when he was too close to her. It was negligent of him as the one in charge of a piece of lethal machinery to perform such a manoeuvre in the vicinity of someone as vulnerable as the rider of a mini-bike.

26. It was submitted, on behalf of the Defence, that even if the 1st Defendant was negligent, there was also contributory negligence on the part of Miss Lam. The onus of proof of contributory negligence is carried by the 1st Defendant.

27. Like most youngsters on hired mini-bikes in the New Territories, she was obviously not a marvellous rider. Those bikes are meant for people who are not really used to cycling. They have the characteristic that when you fall off, it is not far to the ground so normally you do not hurt yourself too much. That makes it an easy bike for the inexperienced rider. Nearly all the riders one sees in the New Territories at the weekend come within that category. They hire bikes for the day as treat and adventure because they do not have bikes of their own. Hong Kong is, in fact, a place where very few youngsters have bikes of their own because the roads generally are just not suitable for cyclists.

28. Despite what Miss Au and Mr. Lee said about her being able to ride the bike normally, I have no doubt that she rode along in the usual wobbly manner which characterises the riders of these mini-bikes. It is almost inherent in the design of these bikes that they have to be ridden in that fashion. Anyone who has driven around the New Territories of a weekend will know what I am talking about. I see nothing negligent about a Hong Kong youngster, who is inexperienced on bikes, riding a mini-bike in a wobbly fashion along a bicycle track. Any motorists encountering such mini cyclists must take extreme precautions. Obviously, the rider of the mini cycle must look out for his or her own safety too, but there is nothing on the evidence before me to show that Miss Lam failed in that regard.

29. I accordingly find the 1st Defendant guilty of negligence, while finding no contributory negligence proved on Miss Lam's part.

30. Having found the 1st Defendant guilty of negligence, it inevitably follows that I find his employer, the 2nd Defendant, liable too. The 2nd Defendant has conceded that consequence.

31. The 3rd Defendant who was the owner of the vehicle was also the majority shareholder in the 2nd Defendant, and it will be seen that the word "Zen" features in the name of both the 2nd and 3rd Defendant. There is a presumption that the driver of a vehicle is the agent of the owner, and on that basis the owner as principal will be held responsible for the acts of his agent. There was nothing on the evidence before me to rebut that presumption. Because the 1st Defendant was employed by the 2nd Defendant was in no way incompatible with the 1st Defendant driving that vehicle as the agent of the 3rd Defendant. The circumstance that the 3rd. Defendant was the major shareholder in the 2nd Defendant tended towards the inference that the 1st Defendant was using the vehicle for the 3rd Defendant's authorised purposes. Therefore, I would have been prepared to hold that the 3rd Defendant was also liable. However, the Plaintiffs case has not been pleaded on the basis of joint liability of the 2nd and 3rd Defendants, but only on the basis that one or the other of them was liable. I set out the relevant paragraph of the Statement of Claim :-

"6.         At all material times the 1st Defendant drove CE 7151 as servant agent or otherwise at the order or direction of the 2nd Defendant or alternatively as servant, agent or otherwise with the permission of the 3rd Defendant, the registered owner. "

32. As the Plaintiff, according to his pleading, will be content with a finding against either the 2nd Defendant or the 3rd Defendant, I have decided that the more convenient course is to enter judgment against the 2nd Defendant only, bearing in mind that the 2nd Defendant has admitted it too should suffer judgment if the court makes a finding of liability against the 1st Defendant.

33. I now turn to the issue of damages.

34. The main award of damages will be for dependancy under FAO or for "lost years" under LARCO. Being too young to marry and too young to make a will, she inevitably died single and intestate. Her sole dependants are her parents who are also the beneficiaries under her intestacy. Any award under FAO will therefore merge with the LARGO award for "lost years" in accordance with well established principles.

35. When she died, she was living at home with her parents in a Low Cost Housing Estate. She had six brothers and sisters but four of them had already left home after marrying. The two at home besides her were brothers age seventeen and eighteen at the time of her death. They were both apprentices who did not make any contribution to the family income at that time.

36. At the time of her death, her father was aged 58 and the mother 54. Neither of them worked then; nor do they now. They depend on their children to support the household.

37. I accept that, at the time of her death, Miss Lam was earning on average $1,800 per month as a skilled sewing worker in a factory. She had been doing that type of work since leaving school at the age of thirteen.

38. She was the typically dutiful daughter of a Chinese family. From her earnings of $1,800 per month, she gave her parents $1,200 per month towards the family budget. In addition, she gave them $200 for their pocket money. Including the money given then by Miss Lam, the parents had an income of $2,500 per month to support the household. The difference between their total income of $2,500 and what Miss Lain gave them came from their married children.

39. Of the $1,200 which Miss Lam contributed to the household, I accept that $600 was attributable to her own personal upkeep. Therefore, Miss Lam's contribution to the dependants in her family was the balance of the $1,200 she gave to the household, namely $600, plus the $200 she gave to her parents as pocket money. The rest of her earnings, namely some $400, she spent on herself. The sort of things she spent her money on were travelling expenses, a meal at work, the fees for the night school where she was studying and for entertainment. She had no savings to speak of at the time of her death. All she had was $150 at hone which would have been enough to see her through till the end of the month.

40. From the figures I have mentioned, it can readily be seen that the amount she expended on her dependants from her earnings of $1,800 per month was $800 per month. Expressed as a percentage, that $800 per month was 45% of her earnings.

41. That $800 per month was her "available surplus" or "free balance" for the purposes of a "lost years" claim.

42. Had she lived, I accept that she would now be earning, on average, $3,000 per month from the same type of work. Assuming that her ? "available surplus" was still 45% of her current earnings, the appropriate figure for her "available surplus" now would be $1,350 per month.

43. There was very little difference between the figures urged upon me by the Plaintiff and those urged upon me by the Defence for the purpose of arriving at a multiplicand. The real controversy arose when it came to the selection of a multiplier.

44. For the Plaintiff, it was urged that the fact the deceased was a female should make no difference to the multiplier selected. It was conceded by the Defence that if the deceased had been a male the appropriate multiplier would have been 15 or 16, and the Plaintiff submitted a multiplier of that order was appropriate here. According to the Defence, the multiplier should be about the same as the estimate of the probable number of years before her marriage. The Defence suggested the likelihood was that she would have married at about the age of twenty-three, so that for someone who had died at age 15 the appropriate multiplier would be about 8. In support of the proposition that a lower multiplier should be adopted for a young female than for a young male, the Defence relied on the decision of a Master in the case of LAU Kam-fook v. HO Hon-por⁽²⁾. There, in the case of a seventeen year old female, the Master adopted a multiplier of 6 for LARCO purposes on the basis she would probably have married at the age of 23.

45. I regard it as realistic to suppose that someone from Miss Lam's background would have married at about the age of twenty-three. That was about the age at which her brothers and sisters have married. However, in the context of contemporary Hong Kong I cannot accept the implication that the likely consequence of marriage for someone in Miss Lam's position would be that she would cease to earn money. A high proportion of young married women in this community go out to work. Even many of those with young babies work. They are encouraged to do so by labour legislation which not only grants maternity benefits but also penalises employers who terminate the jobs of women who take time off for confinement (see S.15 of the Employment Ordinance, Cap. 57). Many married women of all classes leave their young children with baby-minders of one sort or another while they go out to work. They prefer going out to work and leading independent lives. Nor could many of them afford to stay home, even if they preferred to. In a modern, consumer-oriented society like Hong Kong, it is becoming increasingly impractible to have just one spouse working. It is only if both partners in a marriage work that the couple are likely to be able to attain the standard of living which is currently regarded as acceptable in this community.

46. Even if a woman stops work while her children are little, there is the likelihood that she will resume as soon as they are old enough to go to school. Even for the woman who positively prefers to devote herself to the role of housewife rather than breadwinner, there exist various imponderables such as widowhood and "clean-break" divorce which can propel her back into the work-force. Moreover, particularly for someone such as Miss Lam who was skilled in sewing, there would be prospects of part-time work at home even if she decided to cease working in a factory while raising children. The "lost years" are concerned with a woman's whole working life, and the loss of economic opportunity occasioned by her death. A capital sum has to be calculated to compensate for those lost opportunities. Even if a woman were to take a few years off work for the purpose of raising children, she is still likely to need the same capital sum to compensate her for the lost earning prospects of a life-time.

47. I accordingly see no justification for adopting a smaller multiplier for this young woman than I would for a working male of the same age.

48. The circumstance that Miss Lam was likely to have married at about the age of twenty-three could have had a bearing on her parents' claim as dependants under FAO. Once Miss Lam had married, she would have been less likely to contribute so much to her parents. Like her married brothers and sisters, she would, as dutiful daughter, still, no doubt, have contributed something, but probably it would have been less than when she was single. However, I do not regard it as productive to pursue this line of speculation regarding dependancy for the purposes of FAO because obviously the LARCO claim here is going to overtop the merging FAO claim, so that the amount of the FAO award would be of academic interest only.

49. In the case of a middle-aged married man of settled habits and settled employment prospects, the FAO award is likely to be the same as the LARCO award. Lord Diplock made an observation to that effect in Gammell v. Wilson and others⁽³⁾. In WONG Sai-chuen v. TAM Mei-chun and others⁽⁴⁾ which was a case involving a married man with settled prospects, the Chief Justice repeated Lord Diplock's observation. However, the case before me is not one involving a middle-aged married man so that the following observation of Lord Diplock at f - h of the same page of Gammell v. Wilson⁽³⁾ is more pertinent :-

"         My Lords, if the only victims of fatal accidents were middle-aged married men in steady employment living their lives according to a well-settled pattern that would have been unlikely to change if they had lived on uninjured the assessment of damages for loss of earnings during the lost years may not involve what can only be matters of purest speculation. But, as the instant appeals demonstrate and so do other unreported cases which have been drawn to the attention of this House, in cases where there is no such settled pattern (and this must be so in a high proportion of cases of fatal injuries) the judge is faced with a task that is so purely one of guesswork that it is not susceptible of solution by the judicial process. Guesses by different judges are likely to differ widely, yet no one can say that one is right and another wrong. "

50. Despite the difficulties faced by a judge who has to assess damages in the case of the death of someone who has not yet reached the stage of a settled pattern in his or her life, there are fortunately some precedents for a judge to follow. Gammell v. Wilson ⁽³⁾ was such a case as was Furness v. Massey Ltd. which was heard at the same time. Another such case was White v. London Transport Executive⁽⁵⁾. That case developed the concept of "the available surplus" which was adopted by Hong Kong's Court of Appeal in WONG Sai-chuen v. TAM Mei-chun⁽⁴⁾, although the Hong Kong Court of Appeal preferred the phrase "free balance" to "available surplus". That concept of "available surplus" or "free balance" has since then received the approval of the English Court of Appeal in Harris v. Empress Motors Ltd. ⁽⁶⁾

51. For the purposes of my LARCO calculation for “lost years" I am accordingly going to take a multiplier of 16 and a multiplicand of 45% of Miss Lam's average earnings. In case any suggestion is made that 45% is too high a proportion in respect of the period after Miss Lam's presumed marriage, I respectfully adopt the obversations made by the learned Chief Justice at page 8 of WONG Sai-chuen v. TAM Mei-chun⁽⁴⁾ to the effect that when someone marries and has a family that person normally reduces what he or she spends on him or herself. Once Miss Lam married, her "available surplus" from her earnings could, therefore, be expected to increase, if anything.

52. Using the figures I have already given, the actual calculation for "lost years" is straightforward enough. The first part of the calculation relates to the 45 months between death and trial. Working on an initial "available surplus" of $800 at the commencement of the period and $1,350 by the date of trial, one comes up with an average figure of $1,075 per month. Thus, for that 45 months period, the loss is $1,075 x 45 which gives an answer of $48,375.

53. The balance of the 16 year period covered by the multiplier is 12 years and 3 months i.e. 147 months. In respect of that period the multiplicand is $1,350 (45% of the monthly salary of $3,000 at the time of trial) $1,350 x 147 equals $198,450.

54. Adding together the figures of $48,375 for the pre-trial period and $198,450 for the post-trial period, one arrives at a sum of $246,825.

55. It is common ground that the pre-trial loss is to carry interest at 7% per annum from the date of death.

56. Another head of damages under LARCO is loss of expectation of life. Here a conventional award is made. In the recent case of LAI Tatwah v. Franki Contractors Ltd.⁽⁷⁾, Mantell J. held that the time had now come to increase this conventional award from its previous level of $15,000 to $20,000. I propose to follow him on that so accordingly I make an award of $20,000 under this head. This carries interest at the rate of 2% from the date of the service of the writ.

57. Under the head of special damages, I award $4,065 for agreed funeral expenses and $500 for items of personal property damaged in the accident. The items covered by that $500 are a watch, a gold chain and clothing. The evidence relating to those items was somewhat vague, but good enough to establish a claim for $500. Almost any female of Miss Lam's age in Hong Kong is likely to have personal effects to at least that value on her person while out on a day's excursion with friends, so I am prepared to make an award of that amount on the balance of probabilities. The Defence offered some token resistance to this head of claim, but sensibly did not make a fuss about such a modest amount. Those items of special damage carry agreed interest at the rate of 7% from the date of death.

58. Therefore, the total award that I make for the benefit of Miss Lam's Estate is as follows:

59. There is, therefore, judgment for the Plaintiffs on behalf of the Estate against the 1st and 2nd Defendants in the sum of $285,787.00 (rounded up to the nearest whole number. )

(1)    [1981] 3 All E.R. 727, at 735h - 736a

(2)    1983 Hong Kong Law Journal at p. 429

(3)    [1981] All E.R. 578 at 583/d - f

(4)    Civil Appeal No. 133 of 1981

(5)    [1982] 1 All E.R. 410

(6)    [1983] 3 All E.R. 561

(7)    High Court Action No. 11169 of 1983