(delivering the judgment of the Court): The 2nd respondent, a school girl aged 7 years was involved in an accident whilst being driven in her father's car with a bus driven by the 1st appellant. The accident resulted in brain damage. Liability was admitted by appellants, and evidence was adduced merely to decide on quantum.

This appeal arose out of appellants' dissatisfaction with the award on two items of special damages viz. cost of air passage for the whole family from Kuala Lumpur to London including that for the unconscious Allison, $10,866 Item (2), and cost of the return passage for the whole family from London to Kuala Lumpur, $6,016.50 Item (3). Two seats had to be allocated to Allison on the trip to London because of her unconscious state.

Mr. Khoo for the appellants contends that items (2) and (3) should be reduced. Though, in this family of five members, the other 2 children are 6 years and 2 years old, counsel says that only one parent need accompany the ailing child and the medical officer, whilst the other could stay at home to tend to the remaining two.

For the respondents, it was argued that the obvious choice would be the mother, if only one parent could go, which would mean that the father would have to stay away from work to care for the two young ones. There was no evidence to indicate whether the family had adequate household servants to do so on their own or whether additional staff would have to be employed. Mr. Abraham insisted that with the child in a coma, it was reasonable that both parents should be entitled to accompany her.

No argument as to how many members of the family should be entitled to claim under items (2) and (3) was raised before the trial judge. It is not in dispute that the passage of the whole family to England and back to this country was treated as home leave passage and was paid for by the firm.

However the appellants had even made an attempt for both these items, referred to as items (7) and (8) of the particulars of special damages, to be disallowed altogether, saying that the whole expense should be treated as home leave passage paid for by respondents' employers. In reply counsel for the respondents had countered that by being compelled to avail themselves of this enforced vacation they had deprived themselves of a real vacation which in the normal course of events, they would have taken later.

The learned trial judge had taken into account the fact that he sacrificed his home leave entitlement for himself and his family to enable him to finance Allison's transfer to England for proper treatment. It is indeed true that the 1st respondent and his family not only sacrificed the pleasures of a real home leave, for the parents at least must have spent a considerable period of their stay hovering around their ailing daughter. They had also effected some economies by obviating the need for additional household help which would otherwise be necessary to tend to their two younger children if the mother alone had accompanied Allison to England, and leaving the respondent to cope with his employment.

In short what the 1st respondent and his family did was equivalent to his taking the money his employers had set aside for the home leave passage, and spending that sum to accompany the daughter home in order to get her more specialised medical treatment, the journey having become necessary because of the act of negligence on the part of appellants. The respondents were entitled to reimbursement as if the money had come from their own pockets, and there was no need for respondents to undertake to refund such sum to the provider as the plaintiff had to do under the different circumstances of Schneider v Eisovitch [1960] 2 QB 430, in order to be entitled to recover. We therefore feel that in the special circumstances, both sums awarded should remain unaltered.

What we hold here should not be seized upon as authority for the proposition that a whole family should be entitled t