Corr v IBC Vehicles

Where an employer’s negligence causes personal injury and consequential psychiatric illness, liability for a later suicide does not require a separate duty to prevent self-harm or proof that suicide itself was foreseeable when the accident occurred. The claimant must establish that the psychiatric illness caused the suicide. A deliberate act does not necessarily break causation: legal insanity is not required where depression has impaired or overborne judgment and volition. The suicide need not be treated as a separate kind of damage once responsibility for the depression is established. A dissenting view treated delayed suicide as a distinct kind of damage requiring separate reasonable foreseeability.

The deceased suffered serious physical and psychological injury in an admitted negligent industrial accident. He later developed severe depression and committed suicide nearly six years after the accident. His administratrix recovered damages for the estate’s claim, but her claim under the Fatal Accident Act 1976 was dismissed by Mr Nigel Baker QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the Queen’s Bench Division, on 26 April 2005. The appeal concerned whether suicide had to be reasonably foreseeable at the time of the accident and whether the suicide broke the chain of causation. The respondent also argued that the employer owed no duty to protect against self-harm.

Majority

1. Disposition. Sedley LJ and Wilson LJ allowed the appeal. Judgment was directed to be entered on the Fatal Accident Act 1976 claim, with damages to be assessed if not agreed.
2. The employer’s ordinary duty was to take reasonable care for the employee’s physical safety. The claim did not depend on a separate duty to prevent self-harm. Custodian cases such as Reeves v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2000] 1 A.C. 360 were not controlling. Applying Page v Smith [1996] 1 A.C. 155, no separate foreseeability of psychiatric injury was required once liability for personal injury was established.
3. The evidence established a causal sequence from the accident to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicide. The suicide did not break the chain merely because it was deliberate or because the deceased was legally sane. The relevant factual inquiry was whether depression caused by the injury had impaired or overborne his judgment and volition, so that the suicide was an effect of the illness rather than a free, informed and independent act. Insanity in the M’Naghten sense was unnecessary. The approach in Kirkham v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police [1990] 2 Q.B. 283 and Holdlen Pty Ltd v Walsh [2000] NSWCA 87 supported that conclusion.
4. The majority rejected a separate foreseeability requirement for suicide. The modern remoteness inquiry remained concerned with the reasonably foreseeable kind of injury, but suicide could be the ultimate effect of foreseeable psychiatric illness. Sedley LJ doubted the criminal-insanity reasoning in Murdoch v British Israel World Federation [1942] NZR 600. Pigney v Pointers Transport Services Ltd [1957] 1 W.L.R. 1121 reached the correct result, but its direct-traceability reasoning, derived from In re Polemis v Furness Withy & Co [1921] 2 K.B. 560, was no longer sound.

Dissent

Ward LJ agreed that the suicide had not broken the chain of causation. He nevertheless considered that death by suicide after a substantial lapse of time and intervening depression was a different kind of damage from immediate death by industrial injury. Reasonable foreseeability had to be judged at the time of the accident without hindsight. On the facts, suicide was not reasonably foreseeable for a previously happy man of ordinary fortitude, so he would have dismissed the appeal.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) [2006] EWCA Civ 331: by majority, the appeal was allowed and judgment was entered on the Fatal Accident Act claim.
• Queen’s Bench Division: Mr Nigel Baker QC, sitting as a deputy judge, dismissed the Fatal Accident Act claim on 26 April 2005, holding that suicide was not reasonably foreseeable and fell outside the scope of the employer’s duty.