French & Ors v Sussex Police

The established restrictions governing liability for pure psychiatric injury apply equally to employees. A claim is not a stress-at-work claim merely because the claimant was employed by the defendant. Where alleged systemic negligence causes an untoward event, followed by criminal or disciplinary proceedings that cause psychiatric injury, reasonable foreseeability must extend to each link in the chain. Causation must also consider the conduct of the proceedings. A significant extension of the recognised categories of psychiatric-injury liability should be left to Parliament. Claims based on this remote chain therefore had no real prospect of success.

Five Sussex police officers claimed psychiatric injury arising from alleged systemic failures in intelligence management and firearms operations. Those failures were said to have contributed to the fatal shooting of James Ashley, followed by criminal and disciplinary proceedings against the officers. The officers were acquitted, and the disciplinary proceedings were eventually abandoned or resolved.

Wilkie J struck out the corporate-failure allegations under Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (CPR 3.4), holding that the claims were unsustainable in law or had no real prospect of success. The officers appealed against the striking-out of the corporate-failure claims. The central issue was whether the alleged chain from systemic negligence, through the shooting and subsequent proceedings, to psychiatric injury was legally arguable.

1. Appeals dismissed. The evidence supported the allegation that there had been serious systemic shortcomings, but the corporate-failure claims nevertheless had no real prospect of success.
2. The claims depended on reasonable foreseeability of each link in the alleged chain: an untoward event such as the shooting; criminal or disciplinary proceedings against the officers despite their lack of fault; and psychiatric injury caused by the stress of those proceedings. Causation also required consideration of whether the manner in which the proceedings were conducted caused the injury and whether that was foreseeable. The court held that the claimants could not establish the required foreseeability.
3. The law restricts liability for pure psychiatric injury through established control mechanisms. The principles in Frost v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire [1999] 2 AC 455 apply equally where the claimant is employed by the defendant. The appellants were affected indirectly by the death of the primary victim, through later proceedings, and were therefore more remote than classic secondary victims. The reasoning that even officers who witnessed the shooting would have no claim as secondary victims was compelling.
4. The claim was not a stress-at-work case. An employer may owe a duty to take reasonable protective steps where it knows or ought to know that workplace stresses place a particular employee at risk of psychiatric injury, as explained in Barber v Somerset CC [2002] ICR 613. That principle did not govern injuries allegedly caused by the remote consequences of the shooting and subsequent proceedings.
5. The claim involved a significant extension of the duty of care for psychiatric injury. A lower court should not make such an extension. The court accepted the incremental approach noted in Waters v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2000] 1 WLR 1607, but distinguished that case as involving recognised workplace bullying. The restrictive approach in Frost, including leaving radical expansion to Parliament, was more applicable.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): In French & Ors v Sussex Police [2006] EWCA Civ 312, the court dismissed the five appeals.
• High Court (Queen’s Bench Division): Wilkie J struck out the corporate-failure allegations on 20 December 2004 under CPR 3.4, holding that they had no real prospect of success.