The defendant in Dimond v. Lovell 1 negligently damaged the plaintiff’s car in a road accident. While the car was being repaired, the plaintiff hired a car from a car hire company, 1A. The defendant (i.e., in effect, the defendant’s insurer) accepted liability for negligence, but denied that liability extended to paying the plaintiff’s hire charge. He argued that the hire contract was unenforceable for failure to conform with the formality requirements of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, and therefore that, since the plaintiff had no contractual liability to pay for the hire, the plaintiff s need for a substitute car had been satisfied at no cost to her. The House of Lords held that the hire contract was indeed unenforceable.2 One issue was whether the plaintiff could still claim damages for loss of use, even though the loss of use had effectively been satisfied at no cost to her. A second issue was whether the plaintiff was liable on a restitutionary, non-contractual basis to pay a hire charge, so as to render the defendant liable in respect of it even apart from the hire contract. Such a liability would constitute a loss to the plaintiff for which the defendant would be liable.

The general rule is that, in measuring a defendant’s liability, the benefits flowing to the plaintiff from the wrong must be taken into account along with the losses, so that the defendant is liable only for the plaintiff’s net loss. If the plaintiff suffers the loss of the use

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