Psychiatric injury—secondary victims—case tracker


Published by a ÀÏ˾»úÎçÒ¹¸£Àû PI & Clinical Negligence expert
Practice notes

Psychiatric injury—secondary victims—case tracker


Published by a ÀÏ˾»úÎçÒ¹¸£Àû PI & Clinical Negligence expert

Practice notes
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This case tracker reviews the case law which has been decided since the lead case of Alcock v Chief Constable of Yorkshire Police in 1991. Subsequent case law developed the concept of Secondary victims and explored the extent that courts would allow Personal injury claims on behalf of secondary victims. However, the decisions were inconsistent, causing confusion. The landmark Supreme Court judgment in the case of Paul v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust has now clarified the law after considering in detail the previous case law that had developed and is authority on the area. Some cases were expressly stated to have been wrongly decided, others were stated to be correctly decided but for the wrong reasons and these have been flagged. It remains to be seen how the case law develops in relation to accidents in a clinical negligence context.

A secondary victim is someone who has suffered psychiatric injury not by being directly involved in an accident but by witnessing it or its immediate aftermath. The Supreme Court case of Paul v Royal Wolverhampton

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Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom
Key definition:
Secondary victim definition
What does Secondary victim mean?

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.

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