ÑÇÖÞÉ«ÇéÍø

View the related practice notes about Nervous shock

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...