Creating a unique profile web page containing interviews, posts, articles, as well as the cases you have appeared in, greatly enhances your digital presence on search engines such Google and Bing, resulting in increased client interest. If I may say so with respect, the views expressed by Lord Bridge are open to the criticism that, on their face, they entirely ignore the critical element of proximity to which reference has been made, taking us back to the "demonstrably too wide" proposition of Brett M.R. White v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire [1998] 3 WLR 1509 House of Lords . Lord Ackner . My Lords, for my part, I have not felt able to accept either of these two extreme positions nor do I believe that the views expressed in McLoughlin v. O'Brian [1983] 1 AC 410, are as irreconcilable as has been suggested. The common features of all the reported cases of this type decided in this country prior to the decision of Hidden J. in the instant case and in which the plaintiff succeeded in establishing liability are, first, that in each case there was a marital or parental relationship between the plaintiff and the primary victim; secondly, that the injury for which damages were claimed arose from the sudden and unexpected shock to the plaintiff's nervous system; thirdly, that the plaintiff in each case was either personally present at the scene of the accident or was in the more or less immediate vicinity and witnessed the aftermath shortly afterwards; and, fourthly, that the injury suffered arose from witnessing the death of, extreme danger to, or injury and discomfort suffered by the primary victim. Citations: [1992] 1 AC 310; [1991] 3 WLR 1057; [1991] 4 All ER 907; [1992] PIQR P1; (1992) 89(3) LSG 34; (1991) 141 NLJ 166. E.P Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu and Anr (AIR 1974 SC... Doctrine of Pleasure in the Indian Constitution, Paramount Surgimed Limited Versus Paramount Bed India Private Limited And Ors. Copoc and others (Appellants) v. Wright (sued as Chief, Constable of the South Yorkshire Police (Respondent), Alcock and others (Appellants) v. Wright (sued as Chief, Constable of the South Yorkshire Police) (Respondent). 549, 583: Although it is a vital step towards the establishment of liability, the satisfaction of the test of reasonable foreseeability does not, in my judgment, ipso facto satisfy Lord Atkin's well known neighbourhood principle enuniciated in Donoghue v. Stevenson [1932] AC 562, 580. The kinds of relationshp which may involve close ties of love and affection are numerous, and it is the existence of such ties which leads to mental disturbance when the loved one suffers a catastrophe. 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. My Lords, if sympathy alone were to be the determining factor in these claims, then they would never have been contested. 2. In a case of negligence causing physical injury to an employee or to a road user reasonable foreseeability may well be the only criterion by which liability comes to be judged. For this reason Lord Wilberforce said in McLoughlin v. O'Brian [1983] 1 AC 410, 421-422: The class of persons with recognisable claims will be determined by the law's approach as to who ought according to its standards of value and justice to have been in the defendant's contemplation: again McLoughlin v. O'Brian, per Lord Wilberforce, at p. 420F. The disastrous scenes were broadcast live on television and were also repeated over the news broadcast where several claimants alleged they had witnessed friends and relatives die. The case centred upon the liability of the police for the nervous shock suffered in consequence of the events of the Hillsborough disaster . 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. 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. 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. In neither of these cases was there any evidence of particularly close ties of love or affection with the brothers or brother-in-law. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The Chief Constable of South Yorkshire has admitted liability in negligence in respect of the deaths and physical injuries. But these are factual difficulties and I can see no logic and no policy reason for excluding claims by more remote relatives. AUTHOR: Asmi Chahal, 1st year, THE ICFAI UNIVERSITY, ICFAI LAW SCHOOL, DEHRADUN. He has further accepted that each of the plaintiffs has suffered some psychiatric illness. Respondent admitted negligence. But I do not think that too much should be read into these remarks. That simple test, described by Lord Atkin in his classical exposition in Donoghue v. Stevenson [1932] AC 562, 580 as "demonstrably too wide" - as indeed it clearly was - was, however, refined by him into the more restricted "neighbour" test which introduced, in addition to the element of reasonable foreseeability, the essential but illusive concept of "proximity" or "directness." The position of the rescuer was recognised by Cardozo J. in Wagner v. International Railway Co., 232 N.Y. 176, 180: Lord Wilberforce in McLoughlin v. O'Brian [1983] 1 AC 410, 419B considered that the principle of rescuers ought to be accepted. In McLoughlin v. O'Brian Lord Wilberforce in the context of the class of persons whose claim should be recognised said: I would respectfully agree with Lord Wilberforce that cases involving less close relatives should be very carefully scrutinised. 549, the plaintiff saw her injured husband at the hospital to which he had been taken in severe pain before and between his undergoing a series of emergency operations, and the next day stayed with him in the intensive care unit and thought he was going to die. 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. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1991] Facts. 141, Kennedy J. In McLoughlin v. O'Brian [1983] 1 AC 410, a wife and a mother suffered nervous shock after seeing her husband and children in a hospital to which they had been taken after a road accident. Even the apparent exceptions to this, the old actions for loss of a husband's right to consortium and for loss of servitium of a child or menial servant, were abolished by the Administration of Justice Act 1982. To draw such a line would necessarily be arbitrary and lacking in logic. 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. If a claimant watching a simultaneous television broadcast does not satisfy the requirements of proximity it follows that a claimant who listens to the wireless or sees a subsequent television recording falls even further short of the requirement. 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. In the context of the instant appeals the cases of the former type are not particularly helpful, except to the extent that they yield a number of illuminating dicta, for they illustrate only a directness of relationship (and thus a duty) which is almost self-evident from a mere recital of the facts. 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. 73, reversed on appeal [1992] 2 All E.R. Appeal from – Alcock and Others v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police CA 31-May-1991 The defendant policed a football match at which many people died. Outer Temple Chambers | Personal Injury Law Journal | July/August 2018 #167 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. Judgment: 5.3.92. But where such convergence is not self evident, the question of proximity requires separate consideration. 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. In this case, the respondent’s employees policing at the Hillsborough disaster, had charge of safety at the match, and admitted that the incident took place because of their negligence resulting in dead and injuries to the spectators. All five justices allowed the appeal. The defendant admitted that if he owed such a duty to any plaintiff, and if that plaintiff could show causation, then the defendant was in breach of duty and liable in damages to that plaintiff. POLICE)(RESPONDENT) Lord TemplemanLord Bridge of HarwichLord GriffithsLord Goff of ChieveleyLord Browne-Wilkinson. 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]. 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 case raises novel and important issues … change. None of the other plaintiffs who lost relatives sought to establish that they had relationships of love and affection with a victim comparable to that of a spouse or parent. If such relationship is not established the claim will fail. 141, para 5 Abramzik v. Brenner [(1967) 65 D.L.R. Contents 1 Facts 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). The law has developed incrementally. Cup. 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. 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. My Lords, I consider that not only the purpose of the visits to the mortuary but also the times at which they were made take them outside the immediate aftermath of this disaster. The earlier Irish case of Bell v. Great Northern Railway Co. of Ireland (1890) 26 L.R.Ir. 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. Alcock -v- The Chief Constable of South Yorks [1992] 1 AC 310. The shock was caused neither by fear for his own safety nor for that of close relations. In Dulieu v. White & Sons [1901] 2 KB 669, a plaintiff who suffered nervous shock as a result of fears for her own safety caused by the defendant's negligence was held to have a cause of action. Psychiatric damage rules apply where there is no physical injury. It is customary to classify cases in which damages are claimed for injury occasioned in this way under a single generic label as cases of "liability for nervous shock." 394, mourners at a funeral, apparently relatives of the deceased, recovered damages for shock allegedly occasioned by negligence of the defendant's tram driver in damaging the hearse and upsetting the coffin. The extension of the scope of this cause of action sought in these appeals is not on any such ground but, so it is contended, by the application of established legal principles. Packenham v Irish Ferries Limited [2004] I do not consider that this case is of assistance where, as here, the plaintiffs were not personally involved in the disaster. Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1991] UKHL 5, [1992] 1 AC 310 is a leading English tort law case on liability for nervous shock (psychiatric injury). LORD TEMPLEMAN. In my opinion the mere fact of the particular relationship was insufficient to place the plaintiff within the class of persons to whom a duty of care could be owed by the defendant as being foreseeably at risk of psychiatric illness by reason of injury or peril to the individuals concerned. 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. Copoc and others (Appellants) v. Wright (sued as Chief. But such a causal link is assumed for the purposes of these appeals. 73 must be seriously doubted. COPOC (A. P. ) AND OTHERS (A. P. )(APPELLANTS), (SUED AS CHIEF CONSTABLE OF THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE, ALCOCK (A. P. ) AND OTHERS (A. P. )(APPELLANTS), WRIGHT(SUED AS CHIEF CONSTABLE OF THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE, Lord Keith of KinkelLord AcknerLord Oliver of AylmertonLord Jauncey of TullichettleLord Lowry. Suppose, for instance, that the primary victim has lived with the plaintiff for 40 years, both being under the belief that they are lawfully married. 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]". (PDF) Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police (1991) | Donal Nolan - Academia.edu This chapter considers the landmark decision in Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police 1 AC 310 concerning liability for psychiatric injury, or ‘nervous shock’. That it does not is, I think, clear from Hinz v. Berry [1970] 2 Q.B. In those cases in which, as in the instant appeals, the injury complained of is attributable to the grief and distress of witnessing the misfortune of another person in an event by which the plaintiff is not personally threatened or in which he is not directly involved as an actor, the analysis becomes more complex. 65 and Ravenscroft v. Rederiaktieb laget Transatlantic [1991] 3 All E.R. 430, where the plaintiff was herself directly involved as a victim in the accident in which her husband was killed. HICKS AND OTHERS(APPELLANTS) v. WRIGHT(SUED AS CHIEF CONSTABLE OF THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE. 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