What is the current approach to general damages in a personal injury case?

The approach does not contemplate that a separate award would be made where “aggravating factors” justifying increased compensatory damages are found. Rather, it contemplates that the general compensatory damages will be increased to take account of those aggravating factors and, if appropriate, decreased to take account of any mitigating factors. However, it is not unusual for courts in some other provinces of Canada to make a separate award of “aggravated damages” where aggravating factors justifying an increase in compensatory damages are found. Such an award was approved in respect of an Ontario case, in Hill v. Church of Scientology 1995 CanLII 59 (SCC), [1995], 2 S.C.R. 1130, without discussion as to the correctness or otherwise of making a separate award instead of increasing the amount of the general compensatory damages awarded. The comments of Cory J. were, however, expressed in a manner that would be quite consistent with the court making a separate award to compensate for aggravating factors. He wrote:

Aggravated damages may be awarded in circumstances where the defendants' conduct has been particularly high‑handed or oppressive, thereby increasing the plaintiff's humiliation and anxiety arising from the libellous statement. The nature of these damages was aptly described by Robins J.A. in Walker v. CFTO Ltd., supra, in these words at p. 111: Where the defendant is guilty of insulting, high‑handed, spiteful, malicious or oppressive conduct which increases the mental distress ‑‑ the humiliation, indignation, anxiety, grief, fear and the like ‑‑ suffered by the plaintiff as a result of being defamed, the plaintiff may be entitled to what has come to be known as "aggravated damages".