form, he was entitled at the time of his death. In other words,
the damages cannot be regarded as more than an increment of the
deceased's estate in which she takes her distributable share. Clearly
no ground would exist, unless some definite statutory provision by
way of exception or exclusion were made, for distinguishing between
the funds or items of property composing the estate and refusing to
take into account so much of the widow's or relative's share as was
traceable to the damages obtained by the estate under the Survival
of Causes of Action Act. Accordingly, in Davies (or Yelland) v.
Powell Duffryn Associated Collieries Ltd. (1), it was common ground
that, apart from any specific provision to the contrary, any recovery
under the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act which would
benefit a person having a claim under Lord Campbell's Act must be
taken into consideration in assessing the amount recoverable on
behalf of that person under the latter Act: per Lord Porter (2).
In that case, sub-s. 5 of s. 1 of the Law Reform Act was relied upon
as a specific provision to the contrary. That sub-section has not
only been, in effect, transcribed in s. 6 of the South Australian
Survival of Causes of Action Act 1940, but, so far as material and
mutatis mutandis, in s. 23c (1) of the Wrongs Act set out above.
Standing in the Wrongs Act, it would be difficult to interpret the
provision otherwise than as confirmatory of the intention of the
legislature that compensation given by way of solatium under
s, 23a or s. 23b should be cumulative upon and not in relief of the
damages for pecuniary loss recovered under s. 20, Lord Campbell's
Act. But it would be quite another thing to interpret the provision,
where it stands in the Law Reform Act, as operating to exclude
from consideration in the assessment of the balance of pecuniary
loss suffered by a widow for the purpose of compensating her under
Lord Campbell's Act so much of what she took under her husband's
will or intestacy as was attributable to the survival to his estate of
a cause of action, the survival which the Law Reform Act brought
about. In Davies' or Yelland's Case (1), in the King's Bench Division,
the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords, such an interpretation
was unanimously rejected as putting too much strain on the language
of the sub-section. The grounds which were relied upon by counsel
in support of such an interpretation were described thus by Lord
Wright (3) : - " His contentions were that these words mean that any