The Principles Governing the Recovery of Damages for Negligently Caused Nervous Shock

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1469-2139|45|3|476-500

ISSN: 0008-1973

Source: Cambridge Law Journal, Vol.45, Iss.3, 1986-11, pp. : 476-500

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Abstract

Two “landmark” decisions on the recovery of damages for negligently caused nervous shock have now been delivered in two years by the highest courts in Britain and Australia—McLoughlin v. O'Brian by the House of Lords in 1983 and Jaensch v. Coffey by the High Court of Australia in 1984. Despite these decisions, it is difficult to say that the principles of law to be applied in such a case can be stated with absolute clarity and one tends rather to sympathise with the view of Comyn J. in Whitmore v. Euroways Express Coaches Ltd. that “no absolutely clear picture emerges and many of the judgments speak with different voices.” Nevertheless, certain principles in this area are clear and others are becoming clearer, and a statement of these principles now might be of assistance in allowing an absolutely clear picture to emerge.