whether the hypothetical reasonable man in the position of the defendant, viewing the position ex post facto, would say that the shock-induced psychiatric illness was reasonably foreseeable. To essay any comprehensive definition would be a fruitless exercise. The case was known as Frost and Others v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police and Others [1997] 1 All ER 540 in the lower courts. In Bourhill v. Young the pursuer was neither related to or known to the deceased cyclist, who was the victim of his own negligence, nor did she witness the accident, although she heard the crash from some 50 feet away and some time later saw blood on the road. DATE OF JUDGEMENT: 28 December 1991. 141, 157: However the suggested inclusion of the bystander has not met with approval in this House. But I do not think that too much should be read into these remarks. If one goes back to what may be regarded as the genesis of the modern law of tortious negligence - that is to say, the judgment of Sir Baliol Brett M.R. A secondary victim one who is no more than a passive and unwilling witness of injury to others. (at p. 158) clearly contemplated the possibility of a successful action at the suit of a mere bystander given sufficiently horrifying circumstances. So rigid an approach would, I think, work great injustice and cannot be rationally justified. Citation. At the time of the accident she was some two miles away but she was taken about an hour later to the hospital where the injured were being treated and saw them in more or less the state in which they had been brought in. But see the pre-Alcock approach inHevican v.Ruane [1991] 3 All E.R. What is more difficult to account for is why, when the law in general declines to extend the area of compensation to those whose injury arises only from the circumstances of their relationship to the primary victim, an exception has arisen in those cases in which the event of injury to the primary victim has been actually witnessed by the plaintiff and the injury claimed is established as stemming from that fact. Judgment: 5.3.92. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police (1991) (Alcock) concerned sixteen claims against thedefendant for psychiatric injury resulting from the Hillsborough disaster. Jun 19, 2020 | Case Comments, Editorial Of Contemporary Law. 3. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1991] Facts. It would be inaccurate and hurtful to suggest that grief is made any the less real or deprivation more tolerable by a more gradual realisation, but to extend liability to cover injury in such cases would be to extend the law in a direction for which there is no pressing policy need and in which there is no logical stopping point. Cases in which damages are claimed for directly inflicted injuries of this nature may present greater difficulties of proof but they are not, in their essential elements, any different from cases where the damages claimed arise from direct physical injury and they present no very difficult problems of analysis where the plaintiff has himself been directly involved in the accident from which the injury is said to arise. Frost v Chief Constable of Yorkshire Police [1997] 3 WLR 1194. 549, Deane J. expressed the view that no claim could be entertained as a matter of law in a case where the primary victim is the negligent defendant himself and the shock to the plaintiff arises from witnessing the victim's self-inflicted injury. There she was told that one of the children had been killed, and saw her husband and the other two in a distressed condition and bearing on their persons the immediate effects of the accident. In the case of both Brian Harrison and Robert Alcock, although both were present at the ground and saw scenes which were obviously distressing and such as to cause grave worry and concern, their perception of the actual consequences of the disaster to those to whom they were related was again gradual. Ten only of these fifteen plaintiffs now appeal to your Lordships' House, with leave granted in the Court of Appeal. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire House of Lords. The court observed that the claimant must usually show a sufficiently proximate relationship to victim of the event. He was not, in my judgment, reasonably foreseeable as a potential sufferer from shock-induced psychiatric illness, in default of very special facts and none was established. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire House of Lords. On the other hand, Lord Bridge of Harwich, with whom Lord Scarman agreed, rejected an appeal to policy considerations as a justification for fixing arbitrary lines of demarcation of the duty in negligence. But injury by psychiatric illness is more subtle, as Lord Macmillan observed in Bourhill v. Young [1943] AC 92, 103. The plaintiffs in this case were mostly secondary victims, i.e. The present position in relation to recognisable claims is that parents and spouses have been held entitled to recover for shock caused by fear for the safety of their children or the other spouse. 386G-387A. * Enter a valid Journal (must Outer Temple Chambers | Personal Injury Law Journal | July/August 2018 #167 The same is true of other plaintiffs who were not present at the ground and who lost brothers, or in one case a grandson. She was held entitled to recover damages for the psychiatric illness she suffered as a result. The plaintiffs, being relatives and friends of the deceased, inter alia suffered nervous shock having seen the events either from within the ground, or from outside or at home on . that no duty was owed to those who are nowhere near the scene of an accident when it occurs. These images provided no doubt the matrix for imagined consequences giving rise to grave concern and worry, followed by a dawning consciousness over an extended period that the imagined consequence had occurred, finally confirmed by news of the death and, in some cases, subsequent visual identification of the victim. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police concerned sixteen unsuccessful claims for psychiatric injury (PI) resulting from the Hillsborough disaster. It was argued on their behalf that the law has never excluded strangers to the victim from claiming for nervous shock resulting from the accident. That it does not is, I think, clear from Hinz v. Berry [1970] 2 Q.B. I do not consider that it would be profitable to try and define who such others might be or to draw any dividing line between one degree of relationship and another. Interact directly with CaseMine users looking for advocates in your area of specialization. I turn to the question of proximity which arises in the context of those plaintiffs who saw the disaster on television either contemporaneously or in later recorded transmissions and of those who identified their loved ones in the temporary mortuary some nine or more hours after the disaster had taken place. My Lords, That, however, is not to say they must necessarily be excluded. The closeness of the tie would, however, require to be proved by a plaintiff, though no doubt being capable of being presumed in appropriate cases. But these are factual difficulties and I can see no logic and no policy reason for excluding claims by more remote relatives. They permitted thousands of football fans to gather in one part of the stadium. Nevertheless, except in those cases which were based upon some ancient and now outmoded concepts of the quasi-proprietorial rights of husbands over their wives, parents over their children or employers over their menial servants, the common law has, in general, declined to entertain claims for such consequential injuries from third parties save possibly where loss has arisen from the necessary performance of a legal duty imposed on such party by the injury to the victim. In this case, hearing about the disaster on radio or TV reports subsequently did not satisfy condition but the police department was held liable for negligence in duty to care. However Kennedy J. said, at p. 675, that if nervous shock occasioned by negligence was to give a cause of action it must arise "from a reasonable fear of immediate personal injury to oneself." Upon Report from the Appellate Committee to whom was referred the Cause Alcock and others against Wright (sued as Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police) and Copoc and others against Wright (sued as Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police), That the Committee had heard Counsel as well on Monday the 7th as on Tuesday the 8th, Wednesday the 9th, Thursday the 10th and … It was semi final of FA cup. In support of this proposition I rely on the speech of Lord Wilberforce in McLoughlin v. O'Brian [1983] 1 AC 410, 420F-421A and on the carefully reasoned judgment of Deane J. in the High Court of Australia in Jaensch v. Coffey, (1984) 155 C.L.R. I do not find it surprising that in this particular area of the tort of negligence, the reasonable foreseeability test is not given a free rein. 73, reversed on appeal [1992] 2 All E.R. Had she sustained bodily injury from the incursion there could never have been the slightest doubt about the defendant's liability and the fact that what brought about the injury was not an actual contact but the imminent threat to her personally posed by the defendant's negligence could make no difference to the result. Into the same category, as it seems to me, fall the so called "rescue cases." Thus, Dulieu v. White & Sons [1901] 2 KB 669 where the plaintiff was naturally and obviously put in fear for her own safety when a runaway vehicle broke through the front of the public house where she was employed, is, at any rate to modern eyes, a tolerably obvious case. 870, and Wigg v. British Railways Board, The Times, 4 February 1986, where the negligent act of the defendant has put the plaintiff in the position of being, or of thinking that he is about to be or has been, the involuntary cause of another's death or injury and the illness complained of stems from the shock to the plaintiff of the consciousness of this supposed fact. Of the four plaintiffs who were unsuccessful before the judge, one who lost his brother-in-law was at the ground, one who lost her fiance saw the disaster on television, another who lost her brother heard initial news while shopping and more details on the wireless during the evening and a third who lost a grandson heard of the disaster on the wireless and later saw a recorded television programme. So too in Best v. Samuel Fox & Co. Ltd. [1952] A.C. 716, 734, Lord Morton of Henryton observed: A fortiori the law will not compensate such a person for the mental anguish and even illness which may flow from having lost a wife, parent or child or from being compelled to look after an invalid, although there is a statutory exception to this where the victim dies as a result of the accident and the plaintiff is his widow or minor unmarried child. A v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire High Court Lord Oliver of Aylmerton . 's foregoing limitation was disapproved by the majority of the Court of Appeal who held that a mother who had sustained nervous shock as a result of fear for the safety of her three children due to the movement of an unmanned lorry had a cause of action against the owner of the lorry. View Alcock and others v Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police.docx from BUSINESS 285 at Northeastern University. This case arose from the disaster … His relatives who died were his two brothers. 6.9 Judgment on Withdrawal – part - rule 52 EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS Claimant: Ms S Morgan Respondent: The Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police JUDGMENT The claims at paragraphs 5 and 16 of the “Discussion” section of the Order of 29 January 2020 are dismissed following a … Alcock v. Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police (1991) 3 WLR 1057 Cases referrred Bourhill v. Young [1943 A.C. 92] para 5 McLoughlin v. O'Brian [(1983) 1 A.C. 410]. That judgment was concerned with the question whether the defendant owed a duty of care in relation to nervous shock to any, and if so to which, of the plaintiffs. Indeed, Mr. Hytner, for the plaintiffs, has boldly claimed that it should not be. This was the first case in the United Kingdom in which a plaintiff who neither saw nor heard the accident nor saw its aftermath at the locus successfully claimed damages for nervous shock. Lord Lowry . That such an exception exists is now too well established to be called in question. It is of paramount importance that the law enforcement “‘Shock’, in the context of this cause of action, involves the sudden appreciation by sight or sound of a horrifying event, which violently agitates the mind. If there exists a sufficient degree of proximity to sustain a claim for damages for nervous shock, why it may be justifiably be asked, does not that proximity also support that perhaps more easily foreseeable loss which the plaintiff may suffer as a direct result of the death or injury from which the shock arises. This is described as a “close tie of love and affection”. ... Robert Alcock … In any event, there is in many cases, as for instance cases of direct physical injury in a highway accident, an almost necessary coalescence of the twin elements of foreseeability and proximity, the one flowing from the other. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 AC 310 is a leading English tort law case on liability for nervous shock (psychiatric injury). Moreover, this case originally gave the concept of claiming damages as a ‘secondary victim’ and ‘primary victim’. In my view the proper approach is to examine each case on its own facts in order to see whether the claimant has established so close a relationship of love and affection to the victim as might reasonably be expected in the case of spouses or parents and children. View Alcock and others v Chief Constable of the South Yorkshire Police.docx from BUSINESS 285 at Northeastern University. Concurring as I do in that conclusion, I do not consider that it would be helpful to add further observations of my own to what has already been said by your Lordships. They may be present in family relationships or those of close friendship, and may be stronger in the case of engaged couples than in that of persons who have been married to each other for many years. in Heaven v. Pender (1883) 11 Q.B.D. 912, the plaintiff recovered damages for nervous shock sustained as a result of his prolonged rescue efforts at the scene of a serious railway accident which had occurred near his home. In case of any confusion, feel free to reach out to us.Leave your message here. Equally, I do not read Lord Wilberforce (whose remarks in this context were, in any event, obiter since the question of fixing lines of demarcation by reference to public policy did not in fact arise) as excluding altogether a pragmatic approach to claims of this nature. There may, indeed, be no primary "victim" in fact. As I read the evidence, the shock in each case arose not from the original impact of the transmitted image which did not, as has been pointed out, depict the suffering of recognisable individuals. But such a causal link is assumed for the purposes of these appeals. He was medically retired from the South Yorkshire Police in May 2008, and he complained that he had been the victim of unlawful discrimination. In these appeals the visits to the mortuary were made no earlier than nine hours after the disaster and were made not for the purpose of rescuing or giving comfort to the victim but purely for the purpose of identification. Does she suffer less shock or grief because it is subsequently discovered that their marriage was invalid? All five justices allowed the appeal. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire was a case where the actings of the police were negligent by reason of the opening of the pens, thereby creating danger to the spectators who then entered them in excessive numbers. These cases included claims made by brothers, sisters, parents, a grand-parent and a fiancé. 549, 552, 578. It is readily foreseeable that very real and easily ascertainable injury is likely to result to those dependent upon the primary victim or those upon whom, as a result of negligently inflicted injury, the primary victim himself becomes dependent. No remoter relative has successfully claimed in the United Kingdom. The physical proximity of the pursuer to the point of collision was outside the area in which the deceased could reasonably have contemplated any injury to her and that answered both the question of whether there was reasonable foresight and whether there was any relationship with the deceased inferring a duty of care. This House, reversing the Court of Appeal, held that she was entitled to recover damages. In Alcock v. Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 A.C. 310, claims were brought by those who had suffered psychiatric injury as a result of the Hillsborough disaster. The fact that the defendant's negligent conduct has foreseeably put the plaintiff in the position of being an unwilling participant in the event establishes of itself a sufficiently proximate relationship between them and the principal question is whether, in the circumstances, injury of that type to that plaintiff was or was not reasonably foreseeable. in Heaven v. Pender, 11 Q.B.D. Case: Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1991] UKHL 5 Secondary victim claims: Is the tide turning? The source of the shock and distress in all these cases is the affectionate relationship which existed between the plaintiff and the victim and the traumatic effect of the negligence is equally foreseeable, given that relationship, however the relationship arises. Obviously a claim for damages for psychiatric injury by a remote relative of the primary victim will factually require most cautious scrutiny and faces considerable evidentiary difficulties. The fundamental difference in approach is that on behalf of the plaintiffs it is contended that the consideration of these three elements is merely part of the process of deciding whether, as a matter of fact, the reasonable foreseeability test has been satisfied. The question does not, fortunately, fall to be determined in the instant case, but I suspect that an English court would be likely to take a similar view. The case is thus a good illustration of the coalescence of the two elements of reasonable foreseeability and proximity, but otherwise it affords little assistance in establishing any criterion for the degree of proximity which would establish the duty of care, save that it implies necessity for a closer degree of physical propinquity to the event than has been thought necessary in subsequent cases. As Lord Reid said in McKew v. Holland & Hannen & Cubitts (Scotland) Ltd.[1969] 3 All ER 1621, 1623: Deane J. pertinently observed in Jaensch v. Coffey, (1984) 155 C.L.R. A primary victim one actually involved mediate or immediately as a participant and, those who will always have a valid claim. The Court of Appeal found there to be no duty of care owed and no breach. In this case, the claimants argued that the police had acted negligently and in contravention of their duty of care owed. The trauma is created in part by such confirmation and in part by the linking in the mind of the plaintiff of that confirmation to the previously absorbed image. Others present in the stadium had heard about the events in other ways. BENCH : Lord Keith of Kinkel, Lord Ackner, Lord Oliver of Aylmerton, Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle and Lord Lowry . It was his view that liability should, as a matter of policy, determine at the relationship of parent or spouse and should be restricted to persons present at or at the immediate aftermath of the incident from which injury arose. Thus there was no evidence to establish the necessary proximity which would make his claim reasonably foreseeable and, subject to the other factors, to which I have referred, a valid one. It is in issue whether the illness of which each plaintiff complains is causally attributable to the circumstances in which he or she became aware of the death of the primary victim. However in the case of negligence causing shock different considerations apply because of the wide range of people who may be affected. The infliction of injury on an individual, whether through carelessness or deliberation, necessarily produces consequences beyond those to the immediate victim. That they were sufficient to give rise to worry and concern cannot be in doubt, but in each case other than those of Brian Harrison and Robert Alcock, who were present at the ground, the plaintiff learned of the death of the victim at secondhand and many hours later. Thus all but two of the plaintiffs were claiming in respect of shock resulting from the deaths of persons outside the categories of relations so far recognised by the law for the purposes of this type of action. The viewing of the television scenes did not create the necessary degree of proximity. There was, indeed, in that case, a contractual relationship as well, for the event occurred in the course of the carriage of the plaintiff as a passenger on the defendant's railway. It is, for instance, readily conceivable that a parent may suffer injury, whether physical or psychiatric, as a result of witnessing a negligent act which places his or her child in extreme jeopardy but from which, in the event, the child escapes unharmed. 549, 558, for the proposition that the test for establishing liability is the unfettered application of the test of reasonable foreseeability - viz. Copoc and Others (A.P.) In that case the primary victims of the accident caused by the respondent's negligence were the husband and two children of the appellant, who were injured, and another child of hers who was killed. Although this lends support to the suggestion that such damages may be recoverable by a mere spectator, it is doubtful how far the case, which was disapproved by three members of this House in Bourhill v. Young [1943] AC 92, 100, 110 and 116, can be relied upon. The cases linked on your profile facilitate Casemine's artificial intelligence engine in recommending you to potential clients who might be interested in availing your services for similar matters. In general, for instance, it might be supposed that the likelihood of trauma of such a degree as to cause psychiatric illness would be less in the case of a friend or a brother-in-law than in that of a parent or fianc e. But in every case the underlying and essential postulate is a relationship of proximity between plaintiff and defendant and it is this, as it seems to me, which must be the determining factor in the instant appeals. Or it may be asked whether injury of the type with which these appeals are concerned can ever be considered to be reasonably foreseeable where the relationship between the plaintiff and the primary victim is more remote than that of an established category. In 2005, a duly qualified medical practitioner decided that K was disabled and that that was likely to be permanent. Thus such a person, given always the reasonable foreseeability of the injury in fact sustained and of such persons witnessing it, may be within the area of proximity in which a duty of care may be found to exist. 314E et seq. For him to have been reasonably in contemplation by a defendant he must be: The requirement contained in the words "so closely and directly affected ... that" constitutes a control upon the test of reasonable foreseeability of injury. Get 2 points on providing a valid reason for the above Therefore events witnessed on television, for example, will not succeed. Although it is convenient to describe the plaintiff in such a case as a "secondary" victim, that description must not be permitted to obscure the absolute essentiality of establishing a duty owed by the defendant directly to him - a duty which depends not only upon the reasonable foreseeability of damage of the type which has in fact occurred to the particular plaintiff but also upon the proximity or directness of the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant. 338, a husband, whose wife had been severely injured in a road accident as a result of the defendant's negligence, failed to recover damages for a reduction in his earnings due to his having, because of his anxiety for his wife, declined to resume more remunerative employment abroad; although in that case Diplock J. was prepared to allow his claim for the expenses incurred in providing medical care for his wife on the ground that the plaintiff was under a legal duty to provide it. What constitutes the immediate aftermath of an accident must necessarily depend upon the surrounding circumstances. In another judgment (Frost v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1999] 2 AC 455), Lord Hoffman said that "the search for principle was called off [in Alcock]". The primary difficulty here was that of establishing the foreseeability of the injury which the plaintiff suffered rather than the proximity of her relationship to the defendant, who owed her the same duty as he owed to any other users of the highway. in Hambrook v. Stokes Brothers [1925] 1 K.B. Alcock & ors v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire AC 310 House of Lords This case arose from the disaster that occurred at Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield in the FA cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in 1989. The term Zimmediate victim [ is used to describe In my opinion, the necessary proximity cannot be said to exist where the elements of immediacy, closeness of time and space, and direct visual or aural perception are absent. As the person directly threatened, she was quite clearly in a sufficiently direct and proximate relationship with him. The difficulty lies in identifying the features which, as between two persons who may suffer effectively identical psychiatric symptoms as a result of the impression left upon them by an accident, establish in the case of one who was present at or near the scene of the accident a duty in the defendant which does not exist in the case of one who was not. From Wikipedia Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police 1 AC 310 is a leading English tort law case on liability for nervous shock (psychiatric injury). 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