Home Office v Butchart

Control mechanisms developed for secondary-victim psychiatric injury claims do not govern every claim for psychiatric harm. Where the defendant owes a primary duty of care directly to the claimant, the issue is whether the relationship and known or foreseeable risks required reasonable steps to prevent or minimise psychiatric injury. A custodial authority’s duty to a prisoner may extend in this way where the prisoner is known, or ought to be known, to be psychiatrically vulnerable. Pleaded facts concerning foreseeable vulnerability, unsafe cell arrangements and inadequate monitoring can disclose a cause of action. The scope of the duty, breach, causation and the significance of continuing suicide risk may require assessment at trial.

A remand prisoner alleged that the Home Office breached its duty of care by placing him with a prisoner known or suspected to be suicidal, failing to monitor or support the arrangement, blaming him after the cellmate’s suicide, and later placing him with another suicidal prisoner. He claimed psychiatric injury, including an adjustment disorder.

The Central London County Court, HHJ Levy QC, dismissed the Home Office’s applications to strike out the claim and obtain summary judgment on 29 April 2005. The Home Office appealed, arguing that psychiatric-injury control mechanisms barred recovery and that the cellmate’s suicide was unforeseeable. The central issue was whether the pleaded relationship and facts could support a primary duty to protect the claimant from psychiatric harm and a viable claim at trial.

Lord Justice Latham gave the judgment. Lord Justices Longmore and May agreed.

1. Control mechanisms. The claim was not necessarily a narrowly based nervous-shock claim arising from witnessing another prisoner’s suicide. It was pleaded as psychiatric injury resulting from the cumulative effect of incarceration with a disturbed and suicidal prisoner, the suicide, an alleged blaming remark, and subsequent cell-sharing. The control mechanisms discussed in Frost v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1999] 2AC 455, including close ties of love and affection, were therefore distinguishable. Lord Hoffmann’s observation that those mechanisms were not intended to apply to every case of psychiatric injury supported that conclusion.
2. Primary duty owed to a prisoner. The custodial authority owed a duty of care to persons in its custody. Under Reeves v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2000] AC 360, reiterated in Orange v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2002] QB 347, that duty could include reasonable steps to prevent a prisoner taking his own life. The question was whether, in the particular relationship, it also encompassed reasonable steps to prevent or minimise psychiatric harm.
3. Vulnerability and reasonable steps. The pleaded facts were sufficient, if proved, to establish that the Home Office knew or ought to have known that the claimant was vulnerable to psychiatric harm. The duty could accordingly include reasonable steps to minimise that risk. The assessment of reasonable steps had to reflect the practical constraints of a prison community.
4. Trial issues. Placing the claimant with a prisoner whom the Home Office knew or ought to have known was at risk of suicide was capable of amounting to a breach, even if the claimant appeared to agree. Monitoring, the alleged officer’s remark and the later placement with another suicidal prisoner also required factual evaluation.
5. Summary judgment. The evidence, including the earlier opinion that the cellmate presented a long-term risk of self-harm and attempted suicide, supported an argument that the risk remained relevant despite Dr Nayani’s evidence. The claim disclosed a cause of action and had to proceed to trial. The appeal was dismissed.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): in [2006] EWCA Civ 239, dismissed the Home Office’s appeal.
2. Central London County Court: HHJ Levy QC dismissed the Home Office’s applications to strike out the claim and obtain summary judgment in a judgment dated 29 April 2005.