Court Of Appeal Rules That Secondary Victims Must Witness The Accident To Claim

A recent case is being viewed as a landmark ruling because it determines that secondary victims must have been present at the accident itself, rather than the death of a person involved in an accident, in order to be able to claim compensation.

In the case of Taylor v A Novo (UK) Ltd, the courts were asked to judge on whether the daughter of a victim that died several weeks after an accident at work but as a direct result of the accident was entitled to claim compensation for the psychological suffering. While the courts initially judged that the daughter was entitled to claim, the Court of Appeal judged unanimously that this was not the case and that the daughter could not claim because she was not present during the accident itself.

Secondary victims are considered to be those that are not directly injured in an accident but may suffer some form of trauma as a result. Witnessing the death of another person can have a deep psychological impact on a person, for example, and while the person affected was not the direct victim of the accident it is argued that they have suffered injury or illness as a result of the accident that occurred.

The question raised during the Taylor v A Novo (UK) Ltd case did not seek to determine whether secondary victims had a right to claim, but when. HHJ Halbert was asked to determine a single point and that was whether the daughter of Mrs Taylor was allowed to claim compensation even though she had not been present when the accident occurred. Her mother had died as a result of her injuries several weeks later, which the daughter did witness. HHJ Halbert ruled that it would be possible for such a claim to be made.

However, the case went to the Court of Appeal and the ruling was unanimously overturned. The Court determined that it was proximity to the accident itself and not to the death that determined whether Ms Taylor was allowed to claim. The Court said that changing this ruling would require Parliament intervention and not Court judgement.

Accidents At WorkNov 3rd, 20130 comments