Secondary Victims: Are the Newly Restrictive Rules From the Court of Appeal Now Being Tightened Even Further? - Kirsten Wall, Leigh Day
17/09/15. The long awaited Court of Appeal case of Ronayne –v- Liverpool Women’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has, seemingly, made the restrictions on secondary victim claims set out by the House of Lords in Alcock –v- Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police even tighter.
The policy decision behind the ‘dearness, nearness and hearness test’ laid down in Alcock was clearly, and perhaps understandably, to prevent the Courts being inundated with secondary victim claims for bystanders. One must therefore wonder whether the Court of Appeal in the Ronayne case decided to tick off another group of potential secondary victims – Hospital visitors.
Although this might be a sensible policy decision, the subsequent case of Owers –v- Medway NHS Foundation Trust has taken this even further, perhaps too far?
The Ronayne case was bought by Mr Ronayne for the psychiatric injury he sustained after witnessing his wife in hospital after suffering peritonitis and septicaemia as a result of a negligently misplaced suture during a hysterectomy operation. Mr Ronayne contended that there were two events over the course of a 36 hour period that he found particularly distressing, the first was witnessing his wife attached to drips and monitors in the Hospital before the repair surgery was performed and the second was after that surgery when he saw her connected to a ventilator and was very swollen in appearance...
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