Corr v IBC Vehicles

Facts

Mr Corr was seriously injured at work at a vehicle plant when a machine accident was caused by his employer's negligence. He suffered severe head injuries and disfigurement, and later developed a severe depressive illness. About six years after the accident, he killed himself. His widow brought a claim under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976.

Issue

Whether the employer's negligence, which caused physical injury and the depressive illness that led to suicide, made the employer liable for the death, or whether the suicide was too remote or was a novus actus interveniens breaking the chain of causation.

Held

The employer was liable for the death. The depression was a foreseeable consequence of the injury, and the suicide, which resulted from the depression, was neither too remote nor a novus actus interveniens.

Ratio

• Provided the kind of damage was foreseeable, a defendant is liable for its consequences even if its extent or the manner of its occurrence was not foreseeable, so a suicide caused by depression which was itself a foreseeable result of the defendant's negligence is not too remote.
• A suicide that is the product of a depressive illness caused by the defendant's negligence is not a free and deliberate act which breaks the chain of causation, since the defendant's wrong contributed to the loss of capacity for rational choice.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• The test of remoteness asks whether the kind of damage was reasonably foreseeable, and depressive illness of some form following serious injury was foreseeable, even if suicide as such was not.
• A claimant's act breaks the chain only if it is a free, deliberate and informed act, and the evidence was that the suicide was the consequence of the illness and was not a rational decision that cut the link with the employer's fault.
• Cases in which a claimant is able to exercise responsible choice may be treated differently, but where the injury has deprived the person of the capacity for self-control, the claim is not defeated.

Where it fits in the module

For FHS Tort, Corr is the starred authority on legal causation and sits at the junction of remoteness, intervening acts and the claimant's own conduct. It tests the relation between foreseeability and responsibility, how far the law attributes the victim's acts to the defendant when they stem from his or her injury, and how that interacts with contributory negligence in Reeves v Commissioner of Police [2000] 1 AC 360. Students should be able to compare its approach with the Wagon Mound and with cases on deliberate third-party acts.

Criticisms

• The kind-of-damage test is flexible enough to allow the court to describe the harm at whatever level of generality produces the preferred result, so predictability is limited.
• Treating a suicide as not a free act can be criticised as inconsistent with moral responsibility, and the line between an illness-driven and a rational decision is difficult to draw.
• Holding the employer liable for a death years after the accident arguably extends responsibility beyond the scope of the duty of care to avoid physical injury at work.