Court case[1996] AC 155

The plaintiff was driving his car when the defendant negligently drove out of a side road into his path, causing a collision of moderate severity. Neither driver was physically injured. The plaintiff had for some twenty years suffered from myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome), which was in remission at the time. Within hours of the accident he felt exhausted, and the condition returned; it became chronic and permanent, so that he was unable to return to work. He sued for damages, contending that the accident caused the recurrence. The Court of Appeal held that he could not recover because psychiatric injury to a person of ordinary fortitude was not foreseeable in such a minor collision.

The House of Lords, by a majority of three to two (Lord Lloyd delivering the leading speech; Lords Keith and Jauncey dissenting), allowed the appeal. Lord Lloyd distinguished primary victims, who are directly involved in the accident and within the range of foreseeable physical injury, from secondary victims. For a primary victim it is sufficient that some personal injury, physical or psychiatric, was reasonably foreseeable; since physical injury to the plaintiff was foreseeable, the defendant was liable for the psychiatric injury that actually resulted, even if that kind of injury was not itself foreseeable. The control mechanisms and the ordinary-fortitude test apply only to secondary victims. The defendant must take his victim as he finds him, including a predisposition to psychiatric illness. The case was remitted on the question of causation.