Shocking- but no compensation

摘要

1. The courts take a fairly restrictive approach to compensating people who suffer psychiatric injury, largely to prevent a proliferation of claims 2. Primary victims are those who suffer psychiatric injury as a result of being physically injured or through a reasonable fear that their own physical safety is in danger, for example when they put themselves at risk in trying to rescue accident victims 3. Secondary victims are those who suffer psychiatric injury as a result of witnessing someone else being physically harmed or killed, or put in danger 4. To be successful in claiming damages, secondary victims must be especially closely tied in love and affection to the primary victim, and close in time and space to the victim when the incident occurred - ie present when the accident happened or arriving in its immediate aftermath 5. Many secondary victims in the Hillsborough stadium disaster of 1989, at which 96 people died, were unsuccessful in claiming damages, despite losing close relatives or friends-either because they did not arrive at the scene for many hours or because they were not deemed sufficiently'close' (even to a brother).