Private Law Theory

INTRODUCTION
When the United Kingdom Supreme Court (UKSC) comes to decide whether secondary victim law should be changed, via the vehicle of the forthcoming appeal of Paul v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (Paul), the concept of temporal proximity – and the significance which it provides, or should provide, to this category of claim – will be central to the decision. The thesis of this article is that it is important that English law ‘holds the line’ by insisting upon a close temporal proximity between D’s breach and C’s mental harm, but that adherence to the present ‘immediate aftermath’ doctrine should be abandoned. The article also lays out one suggested framework by which temporal proximity for secondary victim claims might, instead, be assessed …

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Rachel Mulheron, ‘The perils of tinkering with temporal proximity in negligence claims for psychiatric injury’ [2023] Journal of Personal Injury Law (2) 93-111.