Chadwick v British Railways Board

Chadwick v. British Railways Board [1967] 2 All ER 945 was an English High Court (Queen's Bench Division) judgement, dealing with the possibility of recovering psychiatric harm suffered by helpers who have witnessed and assisted at an accident. The Court ruled that such helpers, as "primary victims" of the accident, could recover the damage caused by nervous shock in the same way as personal injury, unlike "secondary victims", who have merely witnessed the accident without being directly involved in it.^[1]

Facts

The plaintiff, Mr Chadwick, was an ordinary man, who had suffered some psychological disorders in his youth. Having assisted at a site of the Lewisham rail crash, he had become ill with anxiety disorder and required hospital treatment. His personal representatives had sued the British Railways Board, which had negligently caused the accident.

Judgment

The Court found in favour of the plaintiff for the following reasons:

1. It was reasonably foreseeable in the event of such an accident as had occurred that someone other than defendants’ servants might try to rescue passengers and might suffer injury in the process; accordingly defendants owed a duty of care towards Mr Chadwick.
2. Injury by shock to a rescuer, physically unhurt, was reasonably foreseeable, and the fact that the risk run by a rescuer was not exactly the same as that run by a passenger did not deprive the rescuer of his remedy.
3. Damages were recoverable for injury by shock notwithstanding that the shock was not caused by the injured person’s fear for his own safety or for the safety of his children;
4. As a man who had lived a normal busy life in the community with no mental illness for 16 years, there was nothing in Mr Chadwick’s personality to put him outside the ambit of defendants’ contemplation so as to render the damage suffered by him too remote.

See also

• Nervous shock (English Law)
• Page v Smith

References

1. ^ The terminology of "primary" and "secondary" victim was introduced in a later Court of Appeal case of Page v. Smith

External links

• Text of judgement a-level-law.com