Psychiatric injuries to police

French and others v Chief Constable of Sussex Police CA TLR 5 April

The claimants were police officers who were involved in events leading up to an armed raid, which lead to the fatal shooting of James Ashley. None of the officers witnessed the shooting itself. They claimed damages from the chief constable for the psychiatric injuries they had suffered as a result of his alleged negligence and his failure to operate a safe and effective system for the receipt, collation, management and utilisation of criminal intelligence and firearms operational capability to respond to dangerous criminals, which foreseeably led to the shooting and to the various disciplinary and criminal proceedings brought without justification against them. Their claim was struck out as having no reasonable prospect of success. They had no real prospect of establishing that it was reasonably forcible that the corporate failings would cause them psychiatric injury by the chain of causation that allegedly brought about that result. The untoward event of which they complained was the shooting of Mr Ashley. If any who were present suffered psychiatric injury as a result of witnessing the shooting they might be secondary victims, but the impact of the death of Mr Ashley on the minds and senses of the claimants was not direct. It affected them because it set in train subsequent events, criminal and disciplinary proceedings, which placed them under stress. The claimants were seeking to make a significant extension to the ambit of the duty of care not to cause psychiatric injury. The chief constable had no duty of care towards the claimants not to cause or permit an untoward event to occur, such as the fatal shooting of a member of the public, that could forcibly lead to unjustified disciplinary and criminal proceedings in which the officers’ conduct would be an issue.