Category: psychiatric damage

Ronayne v Liverpool Women’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: [2015] EWCA Civ 588; [2015] WLR (D) 263

‘Where a claimant alleged that he suffered psychiatric injury as a secondary party caused by observing in a hospital setting the consequences of clinical negligence, the court was to take into account the fact that a visitor to a hospital would expect to see patients connected to machines and drips and things they would not like to see, was necessarily to a certain degree conditioned as to what to expect and was likely to be warned by medical staff of an impending encounter likely to prove more than ordinarily distressing. Whether an event was “horrifying” for the purposes of such a claim was to be judged by objective standards and by reference to ordinary susceptibility.’

WLR Daily, 17th June 0215

Source: www.iclr.co.uk