[Requests for compensation for immaterial damage: child and adolescent psychiatric legal assessment in conjunction with the revised legislation].

Child and adolescent psychiatry is concerned with many forensic questions. Among these, expert testimony about immaterial injury (pain, suffering) in conjunction with claims for compensation is being requested with increasing frequency. Until recently German law took the position that in cases of severe brain damage compensation (smart money) had to be granted only as a symbolic payment because the loss of cognition and lack of suffering excluded a feeling of satisfaction resulting from compensation. The highest court in Germany has now revised its position by introducing a new category of immaterial injury. This additional category refers to cases of severe brain damage where the "loss of personal quality" in itself creates the basis for a claim for compensation. As a result, related medical examinations and evaluations require as careful a description as possible and the use of scales to assess quality of life.