Primary & Secondary

• Liability in negligence


  For injury to people and damage to property
• Psychiatric injury


  Injury to the mind rather than the body
• Nervous shock


  Another term for psychiatric injury
• Claimants for psychiatric injury

  • Must show using medical evidence that they have a recognised psychiatric injury
  • Will not succeed in a claim for damages for normal grief or distress
• Primary victim


  A person who either suffers physical injury as a result of another person's negligence or where it was reasonably foreseeable that he/she could have been physically injured as a result of another person's negligence and as a result he/she have suffered a psychiatric injury
• Secondary victim


  A person who suffers psychiatric injury as a result of another person's negligence but was not exposed to danger. There are several other conditions which need to be met to be classified as a secondary victim.
• The Hillsborough disaster took place on 15th April 1989
• The Hillsborough disaster caused many deaths
• There was negligence involved in causing the Hillsborough disaster
• Plaintiff


  The term used prior to 1999 for what is now called a claimant
• Robert Alcock lost his brother-in-law in the Hillsborough disaster and witnessed the aftermath
• Brian Harrison was in the West Stand and knew his brothers were in the pens behind the goal
• Mr and Mrs Copoc lost their son in the Hillsborough disaster and saw the scenes on live television
• Brenda Hennessey lost her brother in the Hillsborough disaster and learnt of his death later
• Denise Hough lost her brother in the Hillsborough disaster and confirmed his identification of the body
• Stephen Jones lost his brother in the Hillsborough disaster and found his parents at the temporary mortuary
• Catherine Jones lost her brother in the Hillsborough disaster and watched recorded television hoping to see him alive
• Joseph Kehoe lost his 14-year-old grandson in the Hillsborough disaster
• Alexandra Penk lost her fiancée in the Hillsborough disaster and was told of his death around 11pm
• To be a secondary victim

  • The claimant must witness the event with their own unaided senses or hear the event in person or view its immediate aftermath
  • The claimant must be in close physical proximity to the event
• Only 2 of the plaintiffs were actually at the Hillsborough stadium
• Sufficiently proximate relationship


  • The claimant must usually show a sufficiently proximate relationship to the victim, often described as a "close tie of love and affection"
  • Such ties are presumed to exist between parents and children, spouses and fiancés
  • Other relations, including between siblings, must prove their ties of love and affection
• The House of Lords hinted that a person with no sufficiently proximate relationship may be classed as a secondary victim in exceptional circumstances