What is the range of potential damages for a plaintiff who suffered from depression as a result of a motor vehicle accident?

Special consideration is warranted for the plaintiff’s depression. It is no doubt true that her family tragedies have, independent of the accident, been a cause of her depression. However, the evidence indicates that she was able to cope with that loss much better before the accident and that the trauma of the March 23, 2003, accident and the chronic pain that it triggered are also causes of the plaintiff’s depression. As with the plaintiff’s physical pain, the fact that there is a pre-existing depression does not limit the defendant’s liability, but it does require a reduction in the potential damage award by an amount sufficient to recognize the debilitating effects that the plaintiff would have experienced anyway: Hosak v. Hirst, supra, at ¶ 71. In addition, I must consider that the plaintiff might have suffered less if she had taken her medication regularly as prescribed.