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Loss of amenities is the loss or curtailment of a plaintiff's enjoyment of life because of a reduced ability to pursue pleasurable activities.
In Skelton v Collins (1966) 115 CLR 94, Windeyer J said (at 129-130):
"[Non-pecuniary harm] turns upon the plaintiff's being deprived of something that he could not have sold, his ability to enjoy in the way that he formerly could whatever life should offer. A man whose capacity for activity, mental or physical, is impaired, so that no longer can he get satisfaction and enjoyment from things that he was accustomed to do and cannot do what he had planned or hoped to do, has not lost a thing the value of which for him can be measured in money by any process of calculation or estimation that I can understand. This consequence of an injury may be called by the convenient phrase, 'loss of amenities', or be described more elaborately and in more elegant words. However described, it is not a loss of something in the same sense that loss of a possession or of earning capacity is. A man who loses a limb, or his mind, does not lose a thing that is his, as his ox or his ass or his motor car is his, but something that is a part of himself, something that goes to make up his personality..."
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