Corr v IBC Vehicles Ltd: [2006] EWCA Civ 331

CA: Ward, Sedley and Wilson LJJ: 31 March 2006

In 1996 the claimant's husband was employed by the defendant as a maintenance engineer when he suffered severe head injuries in an accident caused by malfunctioning machinery. Following lengthy reconstructive surgery, he began to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder causing him to lapse deeper and deeper into depression, whereas prior to the accident he had been a happily married family man of equable temperament. In February 2002 he was admitted to hospital after taking a drug overdose, by March he was diagnosed as being at significant risk of suicide, in May he was further diagnosed as suffering from severe anxiety and depression and three days later he committed suicide. The claimant, as the deceased's widow and as adminstratrix of his estate, brought proceedings against the defendant. The defendant admitted that the accident had been caused by its negligence and/or breach of statutory duty, but denied liability under section 1(1) of the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 for the deceased's suicide. The judge awarded damages of £85,000 for the claim on behalf of the estate, but dismissed the claimant's Fatal Accidents Act claim, holding that the defendant's duty of care to the deceased did not extend to a duty to take care to prevent his suicide and that the deceased's suicide was not reasonably foreseeable to the defendant.

The claimant appealed.

The Court of Appeal held (Ward LJ dissenting):
In an action for damages founded on negligence the question was not whether the particular outcome was foreseeable but whether the kind of harm for which damages were sought was foreseeable and, if it was, whether the eventual harm was nevertheless to be regarded, on grounds of policy or fact, as too remote. The class of harm on which the claimant founded her claim was the deceased's depression, which the defendant admitted to have been a foreseeable consequence of its negligence. Suicide should no longer be regarded as necessarily breaking a chain of causation, and, as the evidence clearly established that there was no other cause than the depression that drove the deceased to suicide, there was no break in the chain of causation preventing the claimant from establishing the defendant's liability under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976.

The appeal was allowed.

Appearances: John Foy QC and Andrew Ritchie (Rowley Ashworth) for the claimant; Jeremy Cousins QC and John Brennan (Moran & Co, Tamworth) for the employer.