PI Brief Update

Secondary victim claims restricted by the Supreme Court alongside important clarification of the Alcock criteria - Nancy Kelehar, Temple Garden Chambers

23/01/24. Paul v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust [2024] UKSC 1. Date of Judgment: 11/01/2024.

In an important decision for personal injury and clinical negligence practitioners, the Supreme Court has addressed a question that has been live in the arena of secondary victim claims for over three decades. The “critical question” [22] is whether a doctor owes a duty to close members of the patient’s family to take care to protect them against the risk of psychiatric injury that they might suffer from witnessing the death or injury of their relative from an illness caused by the doctor’s negligence.

In the case of Paul, it was alleged that the defendant was negligent in failing to arrange coronary angiography during an admission to hospital. 14 months later, he suffered a cardiac arrest caused by occlusion of a coronary artery due to atherosclerosis. This cardiac arrest and emergency response was witnessed by his two daughters aged 9 and 12. The case of Paul was considered alongside two other cases, Polmear and Purchase.

The Supreme Court examined the case law concerned with claims for damages for personal injury suffered in connection with the death, injury or imperilment of another person at [26]-[58]. The key cases in this area are well-known: McLoughlin, Alcock and Frost. Since the leading decision in Alcock in 1992, a number of claims made by secondary victims in medical negligence cases have come before the courts, but the above critical question has not been authoritatively decided until the present case.

In deciding this question in the negative, the Supreme Court emphasised the distinction between...

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