Compensation for Personal Injury in a Comparative Perspective: The Need to Bridge Legal and Medicolegal Knowledge, G.Comandé

This chapter gives a transnational overview on the different judicial and legislative models adopted for personal injury and damage compensation. An alleged constant increase in awards and the difficulties linked to the subjectivity of the assesment and quantification of nommaterial damages raise the need for a more harmonized model capable of providing justice and equal treatment across the world. By means of a comparative analysis, the chapter explores the lasting debate that surrounds economic and noneconomic damages for personal injury and the diverse techniques used for awarding intangible losses. It further proposes an in-depth analysis of selected common law (e.g., England, Scotland, the USA) and civil law systems (e.g., France, Germany, Italy) highlighting the pros and cons of each and prospecting a solution for increasing horizontal and vertical equality without necessarily impeding an inevitable variability of awards among different jurisdictions.