The courts faced an issue of whether it should continue to award an interest at 2% p. a. on damages for bereavement in Bushra Bibi v Method Building & Engineering Works Ltd (No. 2) [2015] 2 HKLRD 402, a case involving a fatal accident.
The general principle is that a claimant is entitled to interest on damages from the time of death to the date of judgment, since the damages should have been paid to him at the time of death, unless the Court is satisfied that there are special reasons not to do so. This equally applies to situations where the damages are agreed by the parties.
The Court of First Instance decided to depart from previous decisions awarding interest at 2% p.a. The new position now is that the interest on damages for bereavement will be awarded at the statutory full judgment rate, i.e. 8% p.a., from the date of death until the date of final judgment, pursuant to the Fatal Accidents Ordinance (Cap. 22). This interest rate also applies to one-off expenses, e.g. funeral expense.