A closer relationship equals larger award

A widowed mother was awarded a pay out of more than £230,000 earlier this month after
coming across the scene of
the car crash in which her son was killed.

Martha Young was walking to meet her son at the gym in Scotsun, Glasgow, when she came across a badly damaged vehicle. She later learnt from police that her son had been killed in that accident. The car had been speeding when the driver lost control and hit her 26-year-old as he walked along the pavement.

Judge Lady Rae awarded Young £80,000 for loss of society, £30,000 for personal services, £35,000 for pain and suffering and £6,250 for the cost of psychological treatment.
“I cannot ignore the evidence
in the present case of the exceptional and unusual closeness between the pursuer and son,” she said.

Young was widowed in 1992 and was said to have had an extremely close relationship with her son. Her late husband, who was killed in a helicopter crash, had asked his son to take care of his mother and sister should anything happen to him. Young gave evidence to the court that she had been unable to visit places where she used to meet her son since his death and had visions of him walking in the street and being thrown
into the air. Lady Rae said she
was satisfied that Young
was entitled to enhanced compensation as a secondary victim of the incident.

Hillsborough disaster

Perhaps the most well-known of all cases involving secondary victims arises from the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. In Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1992], the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords established the criteria that must be fulfilled in order for a claim made by a secondary victim to succeed:

• The claimant must witness the event with their own eyes or ears or witness the immediate aftermath of the event. The claimant must also be in close physical proximity to the event, which would normally exclude events where the claimant had been informed by a third party or witnessed the event through a media outlet.
• The shock must be “sudden” and not a “gradual assault” on the claimant’s nervous system.
• The claimant must establish a sufficient proximity of relationship to the primary victim, described as “close ties of love and affection”. A mere bystander cannot pursue a claim for compensation as a secondary victim for witnessing a traumatic event.
• It must be reasonably foreseeable that a person in the claimant’s position would suffer psychiatric damage.

This was re-affirmed in
2013 in Taylor v A Nova (UK)
Ltd when the Court of Appeal
ruled the existing limitations
should continue to apply
unless parliament intervenes.

In Young’s case, the court was satisfied that all these control mechanisms had been met and it is likely the close relationship between the claimant and her son was the key factor in the judge’s decision to make such a high award in this case. The closeness of the relationship between the primary and secondary victims seems to be the main contributing factor taken into consideration by the court when making an award; the closer the relationship, the larger the award.

Not all cases made by secondary victims relate to the death of a loved one. One of our previous claims from 2010 was made by a pedestrian who was waiting on an island in the centre of the road with her father, who was pushing her son in a pushchair. A passing vehicle mounted the pavement and our client witnessed her father being knocked to the floor
and the pushchair containing her son being thrown across
the road.

Fortunately, her father and child escaped without any significant injuries. They were treated by an ambulance at the scene and taken to hospital. Our client suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of witnessing the accident, and was awarded £3553 for injuries and associated losses. SJ

Tim Driver is a paralegal in the road traffic accidents team at Michael Lewin Solicitors