Sarah Jane Young v John Anthony Downey

For a secondary-victim claim arising from witnessing a traumatic incident or its immediate aftermath, the established control mechanisms remain sufficient. The claimant must establish proximity with the defendant, including a close tie of love and affection with the primary victim, physical and temporal proximity, and psychiatric injury caused by witnessing harm or danger to that victim. The law imposes no additional free-standing requirement that the claimant appreciate that the loved one was involved. A child’s understanding remains relevant to causation and proximity: if the child did not understand that the witnessed events endangered the loved one, the injury was not caused by witnessing that harm. A trial judge must not replace properly reasoned expert evidence with unsupported personal views about a young child’s mental capabilities.

Ms Young, aged four and a half, witnessed the aftermath of the Hyde Park bombing after seeing her father leave the barracks on horseback. Her father was killed in the explosion. She claimed damages for psychiatric injury against Mr Downey, whom the High Court had found responsible as a joint tortfeasor.

Mr Justice Martin Spencer dismissed the psychiatric-injury claim, although he assessed damages at £121,500, holding that Ms Young had not appreciated that her father was or might have been involved and rejecting the relevant evidence of Dr Cooling, the claimant’s psychiatric expert. The appeal concerned whether the law required such appreciation and whether the judge was entitled to reject the expert evidence on the basis of his own views of a four-year-old child’s understanding.

1. Appeal allowed. Sir Geoffrey Vos gave the judgment of the court, with Underhill LJ and Nicola Davies LJ agreeing. No new and separate legal requirement of appreciation that a loved one had been involved in the incident should be added to the established control mechanisms in Alcock, McLoughlin, Frost and Paul.
2. The relevant question was whether Ms Young was sufficiently proximate to Mr Downey for it to be just, exceptionally, to impose a duty. A secondary victim must have suffered psychiatric injury from witnessing harm or danger to the primary victim. A close tie of love and affection must involve sufficient sentience or understanding of the relationship; otherwise the claimant is no different from an ordinary bystander. The issue is fact-sensitive and no fixed age threshold or additional appreciation test should be prescribed.
3. If the judge’s factual findings had been correct, Ms Young would have failed because her injury would not have resulted from witnessing danger to her father. However, the judge was clearly wrong to reject Dr Cooling’s reasoned expert evidence by relying on unsupported personal views that a four-year-old would not have made the relevant association. Those views were expert in character and contradicted the evidence without proper foundation.
4. The court accepted Dr Cooling’s evidence that Ms Young associated what she saw with danger to her father and that her psychiatric injuries were caused by the witnessed events. She therefore established proximity and was entitled to £121,500, including aggravated damages, as assessed by the judge.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Appeal allowed. Damages of £121,500, including aggravated damages, were awarded for psychiatric injury.
• High Court of Justice, King’s Bench Division: Mr Justice Martin Spencer dismissed the psychiatric-injury claim but assessed damages at £121,500; citation [2020] EWHC 3457 (QB).