{"id":5920,"date":"2018-03-07T09:27:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T09:27:01","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-06-21T14:47:25","modified_gmt":"2019-06-21T14:47:25","slug":"vernon-v-bosley-no-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawteacher.net\/cases\/vernon-v-bosley-no-1.php","title":{"rendered":"Vernon v Bosley – (No. 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Vernon v Bosley (No. 1) [1997] 1 All ER 577.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

PHYSCIATRIC INJURY <\/strong><\/p>\n

Facts<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The plaintiff suffered distress after witnessing fire fighters attempt to rescue her children from the wreckage of a car following a road traffic accident. She suffered no physical harm herself, but sought to recover damages for psychiatric injury.\u00a0 Under the law established in Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police<\/em><\/strong>[1992] 1 AC 310<\/strong>, damages could not be recovered unless the alleged injury was shown to be a \u2018recognised medical condition\u2019.<\/p>\n

Issue<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The question for the court was whether distress constitutes a \u2018medically recognised condition\u2019 such as to found a claim for damages for pure psychiatric injury in the tort of negligence. <\/p>\n

Held<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The court held that distress is not a medically recognised condition but rather is simply a state of mind, albeit an unpleasant one, which all humans inevitably experience in the ordinary course of life. As such, the scope of any duty of care could not be extended to encompass a duty not to cause distress. To do so would open the \u2018floodgates\u2019, creating the risk of limitless liability, the extent of which it would be impossible for a defendant to know or predict in advance of acting. The plaintiff\u2019s claim was accordingly rejected.<\/p>\n

Although criticised from some quarters as drawing arbitrary distinctions, the decision was in line with the prevailing case law at the time, which distinguished between pathological grief (a medically recognised condition) and non-pathological grief (a normal human emotion) (Kralj v McGrath<\/em><\/strong> [1986] 1 All ER 54<\/strong>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The plaintiff suffered distress after witnessing fire fighters attempt to rescue her children from the wreckage of a car following a road traffic accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-5920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cases","tag-uk-law"],"yoast_head":"\nVernon v Bosley - (No. 1) | LawTeacher.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The plaintiff suffered distress after witnessing fire fighters attempt to rescue her children from the wreckage of a car following a road traffic accident.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lawteacher.net\/cases\/vernon-v-bosley-no-1.php\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vernon v Bosley - 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