Court case[1925] 1 KB 141

The defendants' driver left a lorry unattended at the top of a steep, narrow street with its engine running, without taking proper precautions to secure it. The lorry started off and ran down the hill. Mrs Hambrook had just parted from her children, who had walked on up the street and round a bend towards school. She saw the runaway lorry come rushing round the bend towards her and towards the place where the children would be. She feared for their safety. Shortly afterwards she was told that a little girl wearing glasses had been injured; her daughter, who wore glasses, had in fact been hurt. Mrs Hambrook suffered a severe nervous shock, became ill and died. Her husband sued the defendants.

The Court of Appeal (Bankes and Atkin LJJ.; Sargant LJ dissenting) ordered a new trial and held that the defendants would be liable if the shock resulted from what Mrs Hambrook saw with her own eyes, and not from what she was told by bystanders. The limitation in Dulieu v. White, confining recovery to fear for oneself, was rejected. Bankes LJ. said it would be absurd and unjust that a mother who, seeing the lorry, feared for herself should recover while a mother who feared only for her children, the far more natural reaction, should not. The negligent driver could reasonably foresee that the runaway lorry might cause shock to a mother in the street fearing for her children.