(delivering the judgment of the Court): The appellant, Yang Salbiah bt. Meor Rasdi (Salbiah) — the only appellant, despite the heading — is a very unfortunate young girl. She was run down by a bus and though the visible injuries sustained were a few abrasions and contusions, the end result was disastrous. She became, in that awful but very descriptive term, vegetative. She had in fact sustained severe traumatic cerebral damage and from being a happy normal healthy and intelligent school girl she has become a severely mentally retarded child, with very little awareness of her surroundings and no ability to respond socially or to control herself physically. She is unable to manage wilfully her bladder and her bowel functions. Born on May 10, 1968, she was at the time of the accident, a bit more than 7 years old. Four years later, just before the trial of the action at a neurological test conducted by a consultant, she was assessed at a mental age of 3 years. She is now a little better than a vegetable. Her condition is irreversible with hardly any prospects of improvement, but the poignancy of her situation is that her span of life is in no way shortened. Throughout the rest of her life — and one may reasonably expect that she will live out her normal span of life in this country — she will be unable to appreciate the world she lives in, to grow up to a gainfully employed life, or marry and bear children, otherwise to lead a normal healthy life and she will need constant care and attention and nursing.

Liability for the accident having been fully admitted by the defence, she must recover a substantial award for general damages to cover past, present and future, injury and loss. Such an award is final and as remarked, "it is not susceptible to review as the future unfolds, substituting fact for estimate." The award has to be a lump sum assessed at the conclusion of the legal process.

It is perhaps for this reason that her claim in the statement of claim delivered on her behalf was merely expressed to be for general damages with the usual prayer for interest and cost. But at the conclusion of the case, her counsel descended into some particulars and submitted that the award should be for (1) pain and suffering and loss of amenities, (2) future loss and (3) nursing services. Her counsel however signally failed to lead any evidence of what this future loss would be or any evidence of the cost of the nursing services he had in mind or he was advised were available for the child. The trial judge, after hearing defendant's counsel's submission which let it be said, without disrespect, was equally of no assistance to the judge, awarded $75,000 as general damages with the "usual" order as to interest and costs. So far from being usual, it is in fact, unusual. From his grounds of decision supplied subsequently, this sum was awarded on a global basis, because, in his view, "the general trend in cases of this sort showed an inclination towards an award of a global sum which would, however, take into account all these three cases." By the three cases, he obviously meant the three heads of claim referred to in counsel's submission.

A global award has the distinct advantage of covering a multitude of sins. It does not show where or how the judge had erred on the side of over-generosity or on the side of parsimony. But there is at least one good reason why a global sum should be discouraged.

It must be remembered that the purpose of damages is to try, so far as humanly possible, to put the victim back to the position he would have been in but for the accident. The damages must be fair, adequate and not excessive. A reasoned judgment must therefore be given by the judge, following legal principles and precedents. Other awards in other cases should normally be prayed in aid, but consideration must be given where the circumstances differ.

In Murtadza bin Mohamed Hassan v Chong Swee Pian [1980] 1 MLJ 216, this court has