Court case[1943] AC 92

John Young was riding a motorcycle too fast in Edinburgh when he collided with a motor car and was killed. Mrs Bourhill, a fishwife who was about eight months pregnant, had just got off a tram and was standing on the far side of it, some 45 to 50 feet from the point of impact. She did not see the collision, which was hidden from her by the tram, but she heard the crash. After Young's body had been removed she went to the spot and saw blood on the road. She claimed that she suffered a severe nervous shock, and about a month later her child was stillborn. She sued Young's executor in the Scottish courts for damages; the Court of Session dismissed her claim and she appealed to the House of Lords.

The House of Lords dismissed the appeal. A duty of care is owed only to those whom the defendant ought reasonably to foresee as likely to be injured by his conduct. Young could not reasonably have foreseen that a person standing where Mrs Bourhill stood, out of sight and beyond the range of physical danger, would be affected by his negligent riding; she was therefore not owed a duty, and her shock, however genuine, was not actionable. Lord Porter said that the driver of a car, even though careless, "is entitled to assume that the ordinary frequenter of the streets has sufficient fortitude to endure such incidents as may from time to time be expected to occur in them, including the noise of a collision and the sight of injury to others, and is not to be considered negligent towards one who does not possess the customary phlegm".