Source: http://ukhealthcarelawblog.co.uk/rss-feed/91-nervous-shock-and-delayed-injury?tmpl=component&amp;print=1&amp;layout=default
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 11:06:27+00:00

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There is no doubt that it is harder for a claimant to win a nervous shock claim now than 3 years ago. The bar for what is a ‘shocking event’ is higher following decisions in favour of defendants in Ronayne and Shorter. Defendants have been encouraged by success to fight more cases to trial. What though of cases where there is a delay between the breach of duty and the primary victim suffering any injury?
Many have assumed that cases of delayed injury lack the proximity required by Lord Oliver in Alcock. This assumption is based on the Court of Appeal decision in Taylor v. Novo. I disagree. In my view the question of whether there can be sufficient proximity between a secondary victim and the defendant in cases where there is a material gap in time between the breach of duty and any injury to the primary victim remains unanswered. I see no reason in principle why such claims should not succeed.
“The early claims by secondary victims mainly concerned accidents, most often road traffic accidents. In those cases, it was comparatively easy to identify the relevant “event” (the accident) although, as the authorities show, it was often more difficult to determine precisely what constituted the “immediate aftermath” of an event.
4. primary victim is negligently managed for his vascular condition over many months; he suffers a dramatic haemorrhage at home with blood spraying over the living room walls. His stepson suffers psychiatric injury.
Proximity is a good and effective, if rough and ready, way of limiting the number of successful secondary victims. The overall aim of reducing the number of successful secondary claims is not undermined by requiring proximity to the consequent injury rather than the breach of duty.
I suggest that when Lord Oliver refers to an ‘event’ he is referring to the fact and consequence of the breach of duty i.e. what follows as a result of the breach of duty, rather than to the breach of duty itself. Any other interpretation would be odd – how could a breach of duty alone, an uncompleted tort, give rise to a nervous shock claim?
This interpretation, that it is the consequence of the breach rather than the breach itself which is the relevant trigger for a nervous shock claim, is consistent with authority. See in particular Walters v. North Glamorgan NHS Trust  EWCA Civ 1792. In that case neither the Thomas J at first instance nor the Court of Appeal considered the significance of the timing of the breach of duty. Baby Elliot was admitted to hospital on 17th July and there appears to have been an on-going failure to diagnose liver disease from admission until his fit in the early hours of 30th July. The mother’s claim required proximity to the ‘event’ which started with his fit and culminated with his death after 36 hours. There is no reference in the judgments at first instance or on appeal to her proximity to any breach of duty.
In Taylor v. Novo  EWCA Civ 194 the Court of Appeal overturned an award to the claimant who had suffered PTSD after witnessing her mother drop dead at home from a fatal pulmonary embolus. The dramatic collapse happened 21 days after the mother had suffered injury at work when some shelves had collapsed on her as a result of the breach of duty of her employer.
In identifying the paradigm Lord Dyson is not suggesting, nor could he have done, that only paradigm cases could succeed. Interestingly Lord Dyson did not suggest that proximity was required to the breach of duty but to the ‘event’. Had the claimant been present when the shelves collapsed she could have recovered damages.
As it happens the shelves injured the claimant’s mother because they were tipped over by a fellow employee. It is interesting to consider what would have happened if instead they had collapsed because of inadequate maintenance work a week previously. Would the Court of Appeal have suggested in those circumstances that a claim by the daughter for psychiatric injury having witnessed the shelves collapsing on her mother would have failed? I doubt it.
a. a mechanic negligently fails to replace a damaged brake cable with the consequence that when the driver collects the car on her return from holiday a fortnight later her brakes fail and she drives over a cliff. Her partner witnesses the fatal plunge and seeks damages for nervous shock. Intuitively one would say that the event was driving off the cliff rather than the failure to replace the brake cable.
b. a pharmacist negligently fills a medicine bottle with strycknine rather than paracetamol solution. He dispenses it to a mother and it sits on her shelf for a year before she gives it to her child who dies dramatically. Is the event the breach of duty or the poisoning and death of the child? Intuitively one would say the latter.
Some cases where there is a delayed injury to the primary victim are facing strike out applications. My view is that such applications are misconceived. A claim should only be struck out where it is not capable of succeeding. These cases are not the subject of any decided authority directly on point and should therefore properly be resolved at trial. Practitioners should be aware of two failed strike out applications before Queen’s Bench Masters in 2017. In Werb v. Solent NHS Trust, on 15th March 2017 Master Roberts refused to strike out a claim where the Second Claimant’s son had committed suicide a number of days after negligently being discharged from a psychiatric hospital. This case can be found on Lawtel. In Sheen v. Subesinghe on 11th December 2017, Master Eastman declined to strike out a claim by a mother whose son had died a week after being given the wrong asthma inhaler.
Practitioners should be aware of the decision of HHJ Denyer QC in Morgan v. Somerset, 29th February 2016. This case involved a suicide following a negligent discharge from psychiatric hospital and had similar facts to Werb. Master Roberts in Werb was critical of the lack of analysis by HHJ Denyer QC and practitioners will no doubt reach their own conclusions, suffice to say that this county court decision is not any sort of authority and can safely be put to one side.
“Mr. Hart, on behalf of the health authority, submitted first that there was no event on the facts of this case to which the proximity test could be applied. He maintained that the test required some external, traumatic, event in the nature of an accident or violent happening. Here, he said, Mr. Taylor's death long after the negligence which had caused it was the culmination of the natural process of heart disease, and the death, however unexpected and shocking to Mrs. Taylor when she learned of it, was not in itself an event of the kind to which the immediate aftermath extension could be attached.
Defendants might argue that Auld J. was suggesting that a gap between breach and consequent harm meant that there was no ‘event’. I disagree. Auld J was not saying that a sudden collapse months after the breach of duty could not be a qualifying event, only that there was no such ‘event’ on the facts of this case.
This is the passage from his judgment which was approved by Lord Dyson MR in Taylor v. Novo. Auld J. was not saying anything new or controversial here, rather he was repeating the principle identified by the Court of Appeal in Sion v. Hampstead H.A. In that case a father watched his son gradually deteriorate over a fortnight following negligent medical care. His claim failed because there was no sudden event, only a gradual decline.
We can only speculate what Auld J. would have held in the different scenario where there had been no deterioration in Mr Taylor’s condition over the months preceding a dramatic and wholly unexpected collapse in front of his wife. If anything, claimants can take comfort from the fact that Auld J. did not say that the gap in time between breach and consequence prevented the nervous shock claim from succeeding.
In my view a secondary victim who satisfies the other control tests (close relationship, recognized psychiatric injury, caused by ‘shock’, who is physically present at the ‘event’ or its ‘immediate aftermath’) should not lose her claim because of a gap in time between the relevant breach of duty and a consequent event, providing that the ‘event’ itself is sufficiently horrifying and unexpected. The decisions in Alcock, Walters and Taylor v. Novo are all consistent. Cases where there is a delay between breach and any injury are not paradigms but that by itself is not sufficient reason to disallow them. The decisions in Werb and Subesinghe, refusing to strike out such claims, were correct.
 I represented the Claimant, no copy of the judgment is available.

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