What is the current state of the law on the basis of actuarial analysis in a personal injury case?

It was suggested in argument that it was open to the trial judge to disregard the actuarial evidence and fix the award of damages under this head by "educated guesswork". This method of assessing damages has been rejected in Canada. See the judgment of Dickson J. (as he then was) in Andrews v. Grand & Toy Alta. Ltd., supra, at p. 458 [D.L.R.]: The apparent reliability of assessments provided by modem actuarial practice is largely illusionary, for actuarial science deals with probabilities, not actualities. This is in no way to denigrate a respected profession, but it is obvious that the validity of the answers given by the actuarial witness, as with a computer, depends upon the soundness of the postulates from which he proceeds. Although a useful aid, and a sharper tool than the "multiplier-multiplicand" approach favoured in some jurisdictions, actuarial evidence speaks in terms of group experience. It cannot, and does not purport to, speak as to the individual sufferer. So long as we are tied to lump-sum awards, however, we are tied also to actuarial calculations as the best available means of determining amount. [The italics are mine.]

See also judgment of Dickson J. in Lewis v. Todd, supra, at pp. 708-709: … the award of damages is not simply an exercise in mathematics which a judge indulges in, leading to a "correct" global figure. The evidence of actuaries and economists is of value in arriving at a fair and just result. That evidence is of increasing importance as the niggardly approach sometimes noted in the past is abandoned, and greater amounts are awarded, in my view properly, in cases of severe personal injury or death. If the courts are to apply basic principles of the law of damages and seek to achieve a reasonable approximation to pecuniary restitutio in integrum expert assistance is vital. But the trial judge, who is required to make the decision, must be accorded a large measure of freedom in dealing with the evidence presented by the experts. If the figures lead to an award which in all the circumstances seems to the judge to be inordinately high it is his duty, as I conceive it, to adjust those figures downward; and in like manner to adjust them upward if they lead to what seems to be an unusually low award.