Compensation for suicide

Savage v South Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust [2010] EWHC 865 (QB); SJ 4 May p3

Under art 2 of the ECHR (right to life), hospitals are under a positive obligation to protect the lives of suicidal patients. In the present case the hospital knew that Mrs Carol Savage presented a real and immediate risk of absconding and a similar risk of suicide. As to whether the defendant did all it could reasonably have been expected to do, the answer to that must be that it did not. At the least there was a real prospect of a substantial chance that had she been made subject to level 2 observations of 15- or even 30-minute intervals she would not have slipped away unnoticed in the way she did, and throw herself in front of a train. All that was required to give her a real prospect or substantial chance of survival was a raised level of observations which would not have been an unreasonable or unduly onerous step to require of the defendant in the light of the evidence. Her daughter was awarded £10,000 compensation. In making the award the judge said: ‘The amount I grant under this head, and I think it is right to make an award, can never compensate the daughter for the loss of her mother and can only be a symbolic acknowledgment that the defendant ought to give her some compensation to reflect that loss.’