Attia v British Gas plc

A claimant may in principle recover damages for a recognised psychiatric illness caused by witnessing the negligent destruction of property. Recovery is not confined to shock arising from actual or apprehended personal injury.

Where the defendant already owes the claimant a duty of care, the principal question is whether psychiatric injury was a reasonably foreseeable consequence and therefore not too remote. The risk need not be probable, but must be more than fantastic or far-fetched. The claimant must prove a positive psychiatric illness rather than grief, sorrow or ordinary emotional distress. Whether the illness was reasonably foreseeable ordinarily depends on the evidence and should not be determined conclusively on sparse assumed facts.

British Gas negligently caused a fire while installing central heating in the plaintiff's home. The plaintiff witnessed the house and its contents burning for more than four hours. Her property claims were settled, but she claimed damages for a psychiatric illness allegedly caused by the experience.

On a preliminary issue, the deputy judge held that such illness was not reasonably foreseeable and dismissed the action. The plaintiff appealed. The Court of Appeal considered whether psychiatric damage caused by witnessing destruction of property must fail as a matter of law, and whether foreseeability could properly be determined on the limited assumed facts.

1. Appeal allowed unanimously. The order dismissing the action was set aside and the case was remitted for trial of foreseeability, causation and damage.

2. Per Dillon, Woolf and Bingham LJJ, psychiatric damage caused by witnessing the negligent destruction of property is not irrecoverable merely because no person suffered, or was feared to have suffered, physical injury. The defendants already owed the plaintiff a duty to exercise care while working in her home. In that setting, psychiatric injury was properly addressed as a question of remoteness. If recognised psychiatric illness was caused by the negligence and was reasonably foreseeable, there was no sufficient policy reason to exclude recovery solely because the precipitating event was property damage.

3. The claimant must establish a positive psychiatric illness. Grief, sorrow, distress and other normal emotional responses do not themselves attract damages. The assumed facts satisfied that threshold for the limited purpose of the preliminary issue, but proof remained necessary at trial.

4. Reasonable foreseeability did not require proof that the precise psychiatric illness was foreseeable, nor that illness was the probable result. The question was whether a reasonable person, informed by progressive awareness of mental illness, would regard psychiatric injury as a real, although possibly unlikely, consequence rather than one so fantastic or far-fetched that it could be disregarded.

5. The deputy judge was not entitled to conclude on the pleadings that an ordinary householder could not foreseeably suffer psychiatric illness from watching her home burn. The duration and extent of the fire, what the plaintiff experienced, and the circumstances known to the defendants required evidence. The Court of Appeal therefore declined to determine foreseeability finally in the plaintiff's favour and left all live factual issues for trial.

1. Court of Appeal: The appeal was allowed unanimously. The dismissal was set aside, and the action was remitted for trial of reasonable foreseeability, causation and damage. Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.

2. Queen's Bench Division: Sir Douglas Frank QC, sitting as a deputy judge, determined a preliminary issue on 19 December 1986. He held that psychiatric illness was not reasonably foreseeable and dismissed the action.