Negligently Inflicted Psychological Harm and the ‘Sudden Shock’ Requirement: A Comparative Analysis

Most legal jurisdictions throughout the world now recognise a general right to seek redress in respect of the concept of negligently inflicted ‘pure’ psychological harm or damage, albeit to varying degrees and applying quite different rules and value judgments in affording such recognition. Common law jurisdictions in particular have been quite slow to recognise such a duty and even now, following such recognition, there would appear to be a judicial bias in favour of physical injury cases and of restricting the categories of claimants in respect of psychological harm claims by imposing a narrowly defined and quite rigid set of criteria necessary to establish such a claim. One of the traditional criteria required in order to successfully establish a claim for psychological harm is the requirement that the psychological injury be shock-induced and arise by virtue of a sudden fright or jolt, as opposed to a gradual onset of such injury by virtue of the cumulative effects of a particularly difficult set of circumstances. In fact, the requirement of a sudden shock formed such a central component in the idea of recovery for psychological harm that the whole concept itself has often been termed ‘nervous shock’,