Dear editor,
I found the piece by Asela Wijeyaratne and Mamata Dutta very interesting (see ‘In the face of uncertainty’, NLJ 27 October 2023).
I led for Mr Mathieu in the trial of Mathieu v Hinds. It was an ‘all or nothing’ claim, with the defendant in effect contending throughout the case and trial that, despite the admitted breach of duty and serious brain injury sustained, Mr Mathieu suffered no loss of earning capacity at all, as he had made a great success of his career as an artist with his pictures commanding high prices in the order of $100k in the ‘primary art market’. We were pleased to defeat that case and obtain a substantial award >£3m. The case was highly complex and involved a number of separate and interesting legal issues, and colleagues have commented on its complexity in various articles published so far.
In cases of true uncertainty, eg as to whether a business begun by the claimant would ever have ‘taken off’, or where returns for an established
