Towards a Better Assessment of Pain and Suffering Damages for Personal Injuries: A Proposal Based on Quality Adjusted Life Years

Personal injuries are closely related to human activity. In everyday life people engage in activities during which they interact with each other in different contexts. Interactions render it possible that accidents may occur. These accidents frequently result in personal physical injuries, inflicting temporary or permanent bodily harm as well as other immaterial losses. The numbers are quite revealing. In 2008, approximately 30,000 traffic accidents occurred on the roads of the European Union resulting in more than 1,500,000 injured individuals and about 40,000 fatalities.1 In the same period a number of 3,942,999 work-related accidents took place, while a total of 4,898 fatalities were inflicted in the workplace.2 The way immaterial losses from non-fatal physical injuries are treated in the context of tort law lies at the heart of this dissertation.