Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1991] UKHL 5 – Law Journals

Secondary victim claims: Is the tide turning?

Tom Gibson discusses case law – and settlements – in the complicated area of psychiatric injury claims by secondary victims ‘Tomlinson LJ’s fourth criterion – that a claimant must have suffered a diagnosable psychiatric illness that was caused by a “sudden shocking event” – tends to be the most difficult requirement for claimants to satisfy.’ …

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Psychiatric Injury: Victims of circumstance

Liam Ryan reports on claims by rescuers and secondary victims, and assesses the need for law reform ‘Is it not time to at least consider if people who provide more than “trivial or peripheral assistance” in the wake of a disaster should also be classed as rescuers in a new, and wider, concept?’ In recent …

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Psychiatric Injury: Picking up the pieces

Liam Ryan investigates unintended tragedies and the scope of secondary victims ‘It seems now to be clear that where a defendant is negligent while a baby is still “in utero” and personal injury (either to the child or mother) was a foreseeable consequence, then the mother will be capable of recovering compensation for any subsequent …

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Case Report: RE v Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust [2017] EWHC 824 (QB)

Shoulder dystocia; secondary victims; psychiatric injury; destruction of medical records ‘The essence of the case was that the infant claimant could have been and should have been born sooner (at least six minutes), in which case she would have avoided all injury. The defendant denied all of the allegations.’In this case, the infant claimant had …

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Psychiatric Damage: Problems for claimants

Edward Bishop QC sets out cases that demonstrate the instances in which a secondary victim claim might be successful ‘Claimants advisers must be alert to the need for psychiatric experts to attribute recognised illness to the shock of seeing a horrific event, rather than other factors.’Claims for damages for psychiatric illness suffered by those who …

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Secondary Victims: A race between the claimant and the ambulance?

Brenna Conroy outlines the distinction between appreciation of an accident and witnessing a victim’s injuries for secondary victim claims ‘One of the key themes that emerges from recent authorities is that a secondary victim claim will fail where the primary victim has received treatment such as to make that scene sufficiently different to that at …

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Psychiatric Injury: Collateral damage

Liam Ryan discusses the case law involving secondary victims in harassment claims One of the more interesting aspects in the development of personal injury law over the last 25 years has been the acknowledgment that psychiatric injury can be not only as serious as physical injury, but a general acceptance that psychiatric injuries are substantial, …

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Nervous Shock: Secondary victims of clinical negligence

Julian Matthews looks at the recent case law on psychiatric injury for nervous shock, where there appears to have been a tightening of the relevant control mechanisms ‘Cases of clinical negligence present particularly difficult problems. The factual background of cases can be very different and often quite complex. The nature and timing of the “event” …

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Psychiatric Injury: Taking a look at secondary victim claims ‘de Novo’

Charles Bagot analyses a quartet of new cases produced in the period since December 2014 ‘Some of the decisions in the 21 years between Alcock in 1992 and Taylor in 2013 are difficult to reconcile with one another and have made it harder to find a consistent thread through this line of cases.’ This article …

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Psychiatric Injury: ‘Nervous shock’ – where are we now?

Andrew Hogarth QC analyses the recent approach of the courts to compensate primary and secondary victims ‘The acceptance by courts that some unmeritorious primary victims can succeed has led inevitably to a desire to ensure that secondary victims who are considered by the trial judge to be meritorious will succeed.’ Most would agree that the …

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