Psychiatric Damage/ Nervous Shcok Flashcards
Coultas
Originally not recognised
Byrne
- Recognised ‘zone of danger’
- Zone of foreseeable physical harm
Hambrook v Stokes
- Truck’s handbreak failed
- mother was told that a child was badly hurt
- not her child
- successfully argued
Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire
- Hillsborough case
- Police admitted negligence
- No plaintiffs were in the lane where the crush happened
House of Lords reduced the proximity to husband/wife and parent/child relationship
Kelly v Hennessy
Must be
i) recognisable psychiatric harm
ii) shock induced
iii) caused by defendant’s negligence
iv) caused by reason of actual or apprehended physical injury to the plaintiff or a person other than the plaintiff
v) defendant owed them a duty of care that shows 1) foreseeability 2) proximity and 3) not countervailing policy concerns
Larkin v Dublin City Council
- Man was not accepted as a firefighter after being told he was admitted
- Argued nervous shock
- Not psychiatric harm
- Embarrassment/sadness is not sufficient
Jaensch v Coffey
‘a parent made distraught by the wayward conduct of a brain-damaged child and who suffers psychiatric illness as a result has no claim against the tortfeasor liable to the child’
Courtney v Our Ladies of Lourdes Hospital
A near 12-hour period was seen as one long and shock-inducing event
Quinn v Topaz
- P worked in Topaz
- Saw a delivery man get shot in the head
- No panic button at the deli where she worked
- Court held that there was not a sufficient level of protection to her as there was no panic button at deli
Kearn v Cadbury
- Woman turned machine on that somebody was in and turned it off after there was screaming from the inside
- Claim succeeded
- No close connection, however she was physically proximate
If this was in England, she would have no claim
Greatorex v Greatorex
- P was part of emergency services
- Was called to an accident involving his son
- He died
- damage
- Held that the son’s injuries were self-inflicted so failed on public policy grounds
Morrissey v HSE
- HSE negligently screened a number of women
- Cancer was not diagnosed
- One woman’s husband argued nervous shock
- Failed on grounds of policy
- Open the floodgates
Fletcher v Commissioner of Public Works
- P was a janitor that was exposed to asbestos dust due to negligence of employer
- Janitor never got lung disease
- Despite this, he had nervous breakdown from worrying about getting the disease
- As a matter of policy, the argument of fear of disease failed
