APIL calls for reform of the law on psychiatric injury

The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has called for reform of the law on psychiatric injury.

At a reception in the Commons yesterday, Matthew Stockwell, president of APIL, said there had never been a better time to look at reforming this part of the law, "which we believe is old-fashioned, inflexible and unfair".

Stockwell said that next month was the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, in which more than 700 people were injured and many suffered serious psychiatric damage, and which provided "the unfortunate backdrop against which this part of the law was shaped".

He said that in the last 25 years, attitudes towards psychiatric injury had "fundamentally changed" and people were no longer expected to show a "stiff upper lip".

Stockwell said the current law demanded a "close tie of love or affection" between the deceased or injured person and the person claiming compensation for psychiatric injury.

Close ties are only assumed to exist between spouses, fiancés, parents and children, and closeness in other relationships has to be proven.

"This is often extremely distressing and intrusive," Stockwell said. "The law does not currently recognise closeness between brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, civil partners or friends.

"Imagine being required to prove your affection for an immediate family member by the very person responsible for his or her death or serious injury."

Stockwell gave, as an example from his own practice, a 13 year-old who lost her brother and sister in a road traffic accident, and whose psychiatric injury set back her physical recovery.

The APIL president also called for the current test, that the event causing the injury is 'shocking', to be replaced by the word 'distressing'.

He said a further test, that the person suffering the psychiatric injury is close in time and space to the negligent event, and has perceived through their 'unaided senses', should be abandoned.

"I don't think we're asking too much," Stockwell said. "We're not proposing that anyone who hears about the death or injury of a loved one should be able to waltz into court and claim compensation - absolutely not.

"It will still be necessary, in every case, to prove a genuine psychiatric injury as the result of negligence. And all the usual rigour, all the usual checks and balances of the law, will still apply."

Stockwell said that all APIL wanted was for the law to be made more flexible, so the victims of psychiatric injury were no longer discriminated against.