1Where a plaintiff suffers from a mental injury that is the subject of consensus medical opinion, a court must analyse the effect of that injury on the reliability of the plaintiff's evidence before concluding the plaintiff is dishonest, and allowances must be made for the possibility that exaggeration or unreliability is a product of the condition itself, following Stevens v DP World Melbourne Limited [2022] VSCA 285.
2A frozen shoulder manifesting approximately eight months after a motor vehicle accident, with no contemporaneous complaints in the intervening period, is on the balance of probabilities an idiopathic condition not causally related to the accident, particularly where the orthopaedic experts for both parties accepted that such a temporal gap made a causal link very unlikely.
3Where a plaintiff with pre-existing psychiatric conditions (including complex PTSD, major depressive disorder and autism spectrum disorder) suffers cumulative trauma from successive accidents causing decompensation, past and future economic loss is assessed by reference to the plaintiff's realistic earning capacity rather than aspirational career trajectories, with appropriate discounts for pre-existing vulnerabilities and vicissitudes.
