Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire [1991] UKHL 5

Psychiatric injuries: A forgotten primary victim remembered

Ann Houghton and Richard Baker outline the complexities involved in pursuing a claim for an involuntary participant ‘Adding “involuntary participant” to the claimant practitioner’s armoury is not fostering a compensation culture: it is enabling victims to seek recourse under a long-standing doctrine which the highest courts have recognised for decades.’ As all practitioners know, facing …

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Pathological grief disorders: Parental psychiatric injuries

Julian Matthews examines some of the interesting legal issues arising in claims by parents for their own psychiatric conditions secondary to injuries to their children ‘The starting point for any legal analysis is that although it is foreseeable that a person who has witnessed an accident in which a loved one is killed or severely …

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Psychiatric injury: Primary rules

Is a claimant for psychiatric injuries associated with their child’s birth a primary or secondary victim? Suzanne Lambert discusses ‘Where the claimant is a primary victim (who is involved in an accident, for example), as opposed to a secondary victim (who may be a mere witness to an accident), there should be no distinction made …

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Nervous shock: Analysing duty of care

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Rushmi Sethi considers the interrelationship between duty of care and secondary victims in nervous shock claims in clinical negligence cases ‘The second claimant had a good arguable case that he had been in close proximity in space and time to the relevant event at the bridge, or its immediate aftermath.’ The High Court case of …

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