Corr v IBC Vehicles: Compensating for suicide in PI claims
Corr v IBC Vehicles: Compensating for suicide in PI claims
Corr v IBC Vehicles [2006] EWCA Civ 331
Thomas Corr (T) was badly injured in a very nasty accident at work in 1996 when a malfunctioning machine severed most of his ear and nearly decapitated him. In addition to his physical injuries, which caused him substantial ongoing problems, he developed PTSD and significant depression. He was assessed by his treating clinicians and medico-legal experts as being at significant risk of suicide. After what must have been six horrendous years for him and his family, he killed himself in 2002. His widow (C) claimed damages from his employers, D, who admitted liability for the accident and that his physical and psychiatric injuries were reasonably foreseeable consequences of their breach of duty, for which damages were recoverable. However, D denied that they were liable to compensate for the consequences of T’s suicide, since T was not insane and his decision broke the chain of causation and / or his suicide was not reasonably foreseeable.
This defence succeeded at first instance but was overturned on appeal by a majority of 2 to 1 (Sedley and Wilson LJJ, Ward LJ dissenting). D has petitioned the House of Lords for leave to appeal and a decision on whether to grant leave is awaited.
The Court of Appeal decision clearly establishes that the fact that an accident victim commits suicide is not an automatic bar to recovery of damages flowing from the suicide. Instead, the question is a factual one, looking at whether the suicide is a consequence of the accident. If so, damages are recoverable.
C’s medical evidence – D had none – said that T’s suicide was a consequence of his depression which was solely caused by the accident with no other factors involved in his suicide. For Sedley LJ, this was enough to establish D’s liability in the absence of some element of fact or policy interrupting or negating causation (there being no such elements in his analysis). Wilson LJ allowed the appeal on a similar approach, saying that suicide was “one of the effects, indeed the ultimate effect” of the psychiatric illness for which D was to blame.
Previous legal attitudes condemned suicide and said that only insanity within the old M’Naghten rules would prevent suicide being an obstacle to recovery of damages. However, as Sedley LJ noted, suicide is no longer a criminal offence and attitudes to suicide have changed over time. Suicide should not longer as a matter of policy break the chain of causation, nor should the criminality of suicide “cast an anachronistic shadow over the modern law of tort”, in his words. Instead, the focus should be factual – was the suicide a product of the consequences of the accident or was it a discrete event? In this case, whilst T was sane and knew what he was doing when he killed himself, the evidence was that he was driven to it by his depression over which he had no control. It was unanimously agreed that, as his depression was caused by the accident, there was no break in causation because his decision to kill himself was not the product of full free and informed thought.
The majority rejected the argument that C needed to prove that suicide itself was reasonably foreseeable as a consequence of D’s breach of duty, in addition to the admittedly satisfied test of personal / psychiatric injury being reasonably foreseeable. Suicide is not to be regarded as a separate kind of damage with its own requirement of foreseeability. This was the ground on which Ward LJ would have refused the appeal. Death by self-harm is a different kind of damage from death by decapitation in an accident, he said, and the victim has to do something to bring about death by self-harm. It is doubly difficult to accept this reasoning, in this writer’s opinion. Firstly, given that the victim is dead either way round, can it really be said that the “kind of damage” is different merely because the method of death is different? Secondly, whilst the victim does have to do something to bring about suicide, to say that this makes a difference to recoverability is inconsistent with Ward LJ’s own view that the decision to commit suicide was not a free, deliberate and informed act.
Ward LJ also was of the view that it was not reasonable (within the concept of “reasonable foreseeability”) to hold D responsible for T’s death. There is a puzzling reference to the issue of whether Britain is in the grip of a compensation culture (as if the availability of compensation is likely to be relevant to those contemplating suicide) before he says that T’s death was a “tragic accident” for which it would not be fair to blame T or D. Absolving T from blame is one thing; but surely many readers of the judgments will find it hard to see why D should not be blamed for T’s death, in all the circumstances.
Now that suicide itself has been confirmed not to be bar to recovery of damages, the focus of enquiry in future cases will turn to the facts. Not all cases will be as clear-cut as this one, where the only effective cause of suicide was the accident. Where the deceased had previous mental health problems, and / or had reasons independent of the accident that led to depression and suicide (e.g. relationship breakdown or bereavement), deciding what compensation (if any) the tortfeasor should pay will be a complicated and potentially distressing process, particularly for the deceased’s family. However, it must not be thought that cases of post-accident suicide are exceptional. Whilst the courts may not have had to grapple with the principle for 50 years, C’s medical evidence was that between 1 in 6 and 1 in 10 sufferers of severe depression commit suicide.
With that sobering thought in mind, one final comment. Ward LJ was extremely critical of the fact that no-one ever apologised to T, even though liability was admitted. T was bitter and angry. An expert’s report, 15 months before T killed himself, said that he would benefit from an apology from his employers. None was forthcoming, said Ward LJ, until D was “shamed” into giving it as a result of his intervention. He added, “I do wish the word “Sorry” was a word which more frequently found its place in a defendant’s (and more particularly their insurer’s) lexicon since in human relations it can mean much and should not be thought to cost much.” Clause 2 of the Compensation Bill, if enacted, will provide that “An apology, an offer of treatment or other redress, shall not of itself amount to an admission of negligence or breach of statutory duty.” Whilst it is unclear why Mr Corr never got his apology when he was alive, the Bill may make it easier for future accident victims to receive apologies without prejudicing defence of claims.