Negligence - Psychiatric Injury

Psychiatric injury

1) Their injury is a recognised psychiatric injury; and

2) Causation is present; and

3) The claimant is a primary or secondary victim.

Frost v CC South Yorkshire Police

'Expert psychiatric evidence' is required to establish psychiatric injury

Reilly v Merseyside Regional Health Authority

Psychiatric Injury must be more than normal human emotion

Causation

There must be a causal link between the defendant’s breach of duty and the psychiatric injury.

Calascione v Dixon

The accident for which D was to blame was not the cause of C's PTSD. - causation

Primary Victims

Those who are within the zone of danger created by the defendant’s negligence and suffer mental injury

Dulieu v White & Sons

It was foreseeable that C could suffer some form of physical injury from the crash so she was a primary victim

Donachie v CC Greater Manchester Police

Primary victims can include people put into extremely stressful situations as well as those who witness accidents.

Page v Smith (re primary victims)

For primary victims, psychiatric injury need not be foreseeable.

Secondary Victims

witnessed either the accident itself or its aftermath and suffered psychiatric damage either as a result

McLoughlin v O'Brien

C saw the immediate aftermath of the family's crash and was entitled to claim. Established points 2-5 of criteria for secondary victims.

Alcock v CC South Yorkshire Police

Multiple Cs claimed for PTSD following Hillsborough. Approved and refined McLoughlin.

Psychiatric injury was reasonably foreseeable

first stage

Page v Smith (re secondary victims st1)

It must be reasonably foreseeable that a person of normal fortitude would have suffered psychiatric injury due to C's negligence

Simmons v British Steel

C could claim for depression as a person of normal fortitude would also have suffered following a head injury (1)

2) Close ties of love and affection

In McLoughlin v O’Brien it was held that such ties can be presumed between parent and child and spouses, and this was extended in Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police to fiancés

McFarlane v EE Caledonia Ltd

'Close ties of love and affection' are required - no claim for a mere bystander

Proximity in time and space

There must be proximity in time and space between the claimant and the incident or its immediate aftermath (McLoughlin v O’Brien)

Galli-Atkinson v Seghal

'Immediate aftermath' includes visit to mortuary if it is an 'uninterrupted sequence of events' (3)

Walters v North Glamorgan NHS Trust Ltd

A 36-hour period was a 'single horrifying event' that was the 'immediate aftermath' and amounted to shock. (3)

Taylor v Novo

C watching her mother die 3 weeks after she was injured at work - no proximity in time and space. (3)

3 C must perceive the accident or its immediate aftermath with their own senses

This includes hearing, sight and touch – McLoughlin v O’Brien

The mental injury suffered must be caused by shock.

last stage

Sion v Hampstead Health Authority

The mental injury suffered must be caused by shock - watching son fall into a coma over a fortnight was not 'shock'. (5)_

Hale v London Underground

A fireman who developed PTSD after the King's Cross fire was a primary victim.- rescuers

White v CC South Yorkshire Police

No special category for rescuers - treated as primary victims. A police officer at Hillsborough was not within the zone of danger so was not a primary victim.