Negligence Flow Chart (3a): Psychiatric Injury
Accident cases
First establish what type of victim was involved:
(1) Primary Victim: The starting point is that a primary victim is someone who was
involved either indirectly or immediately as a participant (Alcock). However, Page v
Smith adopted a narrower interpretation which stated that the victim needs to be
directly involved in the accident, and within range of foreseeable physical injury.
(2) Secondary Victim: this is a bystander at its simplest. It is someone that is not directly
involved in the accident. Alcock v CC S Yorkshire Police stated they are; is ‘no more
than a passive and unwilling witness of injury caused to others’. If they are not a
primary victim, they are a secondary victim.
(3) Rescuer: Rescuers fall under a primary victim as they are directly involved (Alcock)
however, if they are not at risk of physical injury (Page v Smith) then they will be
treated as a secondary victim, and no duty will be owed unless they satisfy the
Alcock criteria.
(4) Employee: a contractual relationship between a worker and the boss/company
(White (Frost) v SS South Yorkshire Police)
(5) Unwilling participants: This is where someone suffers psychiatric illness due to
feeling that they have caused injury to another, due to the negligence of someone
else. – Dooley v Cammell Laird.
Primary Victims
1. Has the claimant suffered a recognisable psychiatric injury?
The illness needs to be recognised by a medical professional, the injury cannot just be
extreme human emotions. Overall, the court will decide what is a psychiatric illness, it is a
decision is law not fact.
If it is not recognised, Lord Stein said in White v CC South Yorkshire there is a restrictive
approach to psychiatric injury due to difficultly of diagnosis, and floodgate risks so they are
unlikely to widen the scope.
2. The illness must be caused by shock resulting from the claimants direct
involvement in the accident
This was held in Rothwell – apply to facts of the case
3. C’s involvement created a reasonably foreseeable risk of physical injury to C;
Page v Smith: this case established the following criteria:
- if it is reasonable foreseeable that the claimant would have suffered from physical
injury, then it will be held to also be reasonably that psychiatric injury can be
recovered. It is irrelevant that psychiatric was not foreseeable if physical injury is.
- Thin skull rule still applies to psychiatric injury
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