Can a Court of Appeal alter a damages award made at trial?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Joyce v. Dorvault, 2008 BCCA 151 (CanLII):

The circumstances in which it is appropriate for an appellate court to alter a damage award made at trial are limited. As stated by McIntyre J. in Woelk v. Halvorson, 1980 CanLII 17 (SCC), [1980] 2 S.C.R. 430 at 435: It is well settled that a Court of Appeal should not alter a damage award made at trial merely because, on its view of the evidence, it would have come to a different conclusion. It is only where a Court of Appeal comes to the conclusion that there was no evidence upon which a trial judge could have reached this conclusion, or where he proceeded upon a mistaken or wrong principle, or where the result reached at the trial was wholly erroneous, that a Court of Appeal is entitled to intervene.

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