Corr v IBC Vehicles Ltd

Liability for consequences of negligent personal injury depends on both causation and the reasonable foreseeability of the type of loss claimed. The claimant must establish foreseeability at the time of the tort; a general foreseeability of personal injury does not automatically make a later suicide recoverable. A duty to take reasonable care to prevent suicide is exceptional and ordinarily arises only where the defendant has control over the claimant and knows of a suicide risk. The principles that a defendant takes the victim as found and is liable for unforeseeably extensive damage of a foreseeable kind do not remove the requirement that the kind of damage itself must be foreseeable. Suicide following an accident may therefore fall outside both the scope of the duty and recoverable damages.

Thomas Corr was injured at work while employed by IBC Vehicles Ltd. The defendants admitted liability for the accident. Corr later developed depression and committed suicide nearly six years after the accident. His widow and administratrix claimed damages for the suicide under the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934 and the Fatal Accidents Act 1976.

The claimant accepted entitlement to £45,000 for the original injury but argued that the suicide was causally connected and legally recoverable. The central issues were whether the defendants owed a duty extending to prevention of suicide, whether suicide was reasonably foreseeable, and whether the suicide was too remote or constituted a novus actus interveniens.

1. Claim partly succeeded. The claimant recovered the agreed £45,000 general damages for the accident injury, together with any appropriate agreed special damages. The claim for losses attributable to the suicide failed.
2. The ordinary duty owed by an employer was a duty to take reasonable care to avoid injury. It did not extend to a duty to prevent the employee from committing suicide. Duties to guard against deliberate self-harm are rare and exceptional, as illustrated by Kirkham v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police and Reeves v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, where the custodial relationship and known suicide risk were material. Orange v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police was applicable by contrast: absent a known suicide risk, no such duty arose.
3. Causation tests such as but-for causation and material contribution form only the first part of the inquiry. The court must then consider remoteness, including whether the loss was of a reasonably foreseeable type, whether an intervening event occurred, and whether the claimant acted unreasonably or voluntarily.
4. The principles stated in Simmons v British Steel PLC, including the eggshell principle and liability for physical or psychiatric injury of a foreseeable kind, did not make suicide recoverable where suicide itself was not a foreseeable type of loss. Hughes v Lord Advocate concerned damage greater in extent, but not different in kind, from foreseeable damage. It did not assist the claimant.
5. Pigney v Pointers Transport Services Ltd relied on the direct-consequences rule in Re Polemis. That approach could not survive The Wagon Mound, which made reasonable foreseeability the controlling test. The reasoning in Cowan v NCB and Wright v Davidson supported that conclusion.
6. On the facts, a suicide nearly six years after the accident was not reasonably foreseeable to the defendants. The alternative defences were therefore unnecessary to decide, although the judge observed that the deceased understood the nature and risks of his act and knew it was wrong.