McLoughlin v. O'Brian

Facts

• The plaintiff's husband and children were involved in a serious road accident. She was not present at the accident itself but was informed and travelled to the hospital shortly afterward. She witnessed her family's injuries and the immediate aftermath at the hospital. She suffered severe nervous shock as a result and sued the party responsible for the accident.

Issue

1. What requirements must a secondary victim, one who suffers psychiatric injury from witnessing harm to another rather than being personally endangered, satisfy to recover in negligence.

Held

• Secondary victims must establish close ties of love and affection with the primary victim. They must establish close physical and temporal proximity to the accident or its immediate aftermath. The psychiatric injury must result from directly perceiving the event or its immediate aftermath through the claimant's own unaided senses. On these facts, given her close relationship and direct witnessing of the immediate aftermath, recovery was permitted.

Ratio Decidendi

Recovery for secondary victims requires satisfying three specific proximity requirements: relationship, physical and temporal closeness to the event or its immediate aftermath, and direct sensory perception. These requirements confine liability to a genuinely closely connected class of claimants.