Tort; Negligence; the duty of care; psychiatric harm; limits of liability; breach of the duty of care; foreseeability of harm; reasonable person; relevance of defendant's special knowledge or attributes.
Facts: Pusey, an engineer employed by Mount Isa Mines, was working in the company powerhouse when he heard an explosion. Pusey rushed to the scene, where he found that another employee (whom he did not know) had been seriously burned by a massive electrical short circuit that the injured worker and a co-worker had carelessly caused. Pusey assisted the injured man to an ambulance but the man died nine days later. Four weeks later Pusey developed symptoms of a serious mental disturbance and was diagnosed as suffering from profound schizophrenia - a 'severe type of mental disturbance including disturbance of thought, disturbance of mood and disturbance of behaviour and personality'.
Issue: Was this a type of foreseeable harm for which compensation could be claimed in an action in Negligence brought against the employer company?
Decision: The law recognises liability in Negligence for foreseeable mental harm if such kind of harm is reasonably forseeable.
Reason: Windeyer J said (at [3], [12]):
"A plaintiff in an action of negligence cannot recover damages for a 'shock', however grievous, which was no more than an immediate emotional response to a distressing experience sudden, severe and saddening. It is, however, today a known medical fact that severe emotional distress can be the starting point of a lasting disorder of mind or body, some form of psychoneurosis or a psychosomatic illness. For that, if it be the result of a tortious act, damages may be had. It is in that consequential sense that the term 'nervous shock' has come into the law. ... Liability for nervous shock depends on foreseeability of nervous shock. That, not some other form of harm, must have been a foreseeable result of the conduct complained of."
The question of foreseeability of such harm prompted the court to discuss the reasonable person standard.
Windeyer J said (at [6]):
"Foreseeability here predicates the foresight of a reasonable man. The reasonable man is not here anyone on the Clapham omnibus. He is a man who notionally stood in the shoes of the defendant and had such knowledge, and capacity for care and foresight, as that defendant actually had and in addition such as a reasonable man in that position is expected to have. He is, in the words of Lord Wright in Bourhill v. Young (1943) AC, at p. 111, 'a reasonable hypothetical observer'. He is not a seer who can foretell future occurrences that are quite unlikely according to the natural and ordinary course of events. Happenings that were fortuitous, in the sense that no reasonable man would have thought of them as within the range of possible consequences, cannot be said to have been reasonably foreseeable. And knowledge after the event, when it is easy to be wise, cannot shew that the event was foreseeable."
In this case, such mental harm was reasonably foreseeable to Pusey's employer.