{"id":500,"date":"2009-07-20T21:12:35","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T20:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theinjurylawyers.co.uk\/injury-lawyers-blog\/?p=500"},"modified":"2009-07-20T21:12:35","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T20:12:35","slug":"injured-parties-fatal-accidents-question-of-proximity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theinjurylawyers.co.uk\/injury-lawyers-blog\/2009\/07\/20\/injured-parties-fatal-accidents-question-of-proximity\/","title":{"rendered":"Injured Parties in Fatal Accidents: A Question of Proximity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"proximity-claims\"Often, where a dependent of a deceased visits a solicitor to discuss a potential claim for damages, they may ask about claiming damages for the grief and stress they have suffered following the death. Shock or grief alone is not sufficient to make a claim. However, that is not to say that a claim cannot be considered where actual recognised psychiatric injury has been suffered.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Psychiatric injury can be difficult to prove and in order to bring a claim the claimant must have:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Suffered a recognised psychiatric illness.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Brought the action within one of the recognised categories for a claim
\n<\/p>\n

So what are the conditions required for the claimant to fall in to a category where they can make a claim<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The court distinguishes between primary and secondary victims.<\/p>\n

A primary victim would be a person that the defendant would reasonably foresee that their conduct might cause that person to anticipate physical harm to the claimant. A secondary victim would be someone who could not anticipate physical injury following the conduct of the defendant.<\/p>\n

If the person is considered a primary victim then it is likely that their claim will succeed where liability can be established. However secondary victims have a further test to pass. This is the test of proximity.<\/p>\n

Proximity is a complicated topic and involves the claimant being close to the deceased in relationship and also in time and space to when the accident occurred. In terms of proximity of relationship, this means that a parent, sibling or partner might be deemed proximate, but not, for example, a room-mate or close friend. In terms of proximity of time and space to the accident, this means the claimant has to be at the scene or aftermath of the event. <\/p>\n

An example of this would be the case of Tranmore v TE Scudder Limited<\/em> where a father learned of the collapse of a building his son was working in an hour and half after the accident and arrived 2 hours after the accident. He watched for a further 2 hours and wasn\u2019t allowed to enter before being told his son was killed instantly in the accident. The court decided that as the father hadn\u2019t seen the accident, witnessed his son die or seen the extreme danger to his son, and then had not arrived at the scene for 2 hours, he was not sufficiently proximate in time and space to the incident and so couldn\u2019t claim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Often, where a dependent of a deceased visits a solicitor to discuss a potential claim for damages, they may ask about claiming damages for the grief and stress they have suffered following the death. Shock or grief alone is not sufficient to make a claim. However, that is not to say that a claim cannot … Continue reading Injured Parties in Fatal Accidents: A Question of Proximity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"yoast_head":"\nA Question of Proximity - Injured Parties in Fatal Accidents<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theinjurylawyers.co.uk\/injury-lawyers-blog\/2009\/07\/20\/injured-parties-fatal-accidents-question-of-proximity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Question of Proximity - Injured Parties in Fatal Accidents\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Often, where a dependent of a deceased visits a solicitor to discuss a potential claim for damages, they may ask about claiming damages for the grief and stress they have suffered following the death. 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