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Psychiatric injury—establishing liability

Liability for psychiatric injury is dependent in part on the nature of the injuries suffered and the manner in which they were sustained.Classifying the victimWhere a claimant suffers both physical and psychiatric injury (even if the physical injury was very minor), they will be entitled to recover damages in the usual way subject to issues of causation etc. There will in such a case be no need to prove the foreseeability of the psychiatric injury if the physical injury was itself foreseeable.The complexity arises where a claimant has suffered psychiatric injury but is physically unharmed.In cases where claimants have suffered ‘pure’ psychiatric injury as a result of an accident or event, the law draws a distinction between:•primary victims—see below•secondary victims—see belowPrimary victimsPrimary victims are directly involved in the event and usually, but not necessarily, have physical injuries as well as psychiatric injuries.For further guidance, see Practice Note: Psychiatric injury—primary victims.Establishing liability—common lawTo establish liability at common law a primary victim must show that it was reasonably foreseeable that a person...

Duty of care in personal injury claims

This Practice Note will consider the common law duty of care. For information on statutory duties, see Practice Note: Breach of statutory duty and the overlap with the common law.For breach of duty of care, see Practice Note: Breach of the duty of care in personal injury claims.For guidance on vicarious liability, see Practice Notes: Nature and operation of vicarious liability, Scope and impact of vicarious liability and Vicarious liability in the course of employment—the close connection test.For information on the duty of care in clinical negligence claims, see Practice Note: Duty of care and breach in clinical negligence claims.For a claimant to succeed in proving their claim in common law negligence they must first prove that the defendant owed them a duty of care.Examples of established relationshipsWhen assessing whether a duty of care exists, the court will consider whether there is an established precedent for the relationship between the parties and follow the precedents unless it is necessary to consider whether they should be departed from.Common examples of situations...

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Do you have any case law relating to secondary victim claims whereby the psychological injury was suffered as a result of the loss of children?

Do you have any case law relating to secondary victim claims whereby the psychological injury was suffered as a result of the loss of children? Secondary victims A secondary victim is one who suffers psychiatric injury not by being directly involved in the incident but by witnessing it and either: • seeing injury being sustained by a primary victim, or • fearing injury to a primary victim For further guidance, see Practice Note: Psychiatric injury—secondary victims. Case law McLoughlin v O'Brian In this case the claimant’s husband and three children were involved in a road accident caused by the negligence of the defendants. One of the claimant’s children was killed and its husband and other two children were severely injured. At the time of the accident the claimant was at home two miles away. The claimant claimed damages against the defendants for the nervous shock, distress and injury to its health caused by the defendants' negligence. The House of Lords held that the test of liability...

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PI & Clinical Negligence weekly highlights—21 April 2022

This week’s edition of PI & Clinical Negligence weekly highlights includes an announcement by The National Archives that they plan to publish court judgments and a warning by the Association for Personal Injury Lawyers that a no-fault system for clinical negligence claims will not work. This edition also includes our usual round-up of other key cases and news and New Law Journal articles of interest.

Who is a primary victim? (YAH v Medway NHS Foundation Trust)

Personal Injury analysis: Should a mother who suffers psychiatric harm because of injuries sustained by her child during childbirth be regarded as a ‘primary victim’? Richard Money-Kyrle, partner at Boyes Turner and David Juckes, barrister at Hailsham Chambers, report on YAH v Medway NHS Foundation Trust.