Jane v Luke
Since Jane has suffered injuries, she in immediately classified under a primary victim. The first element is duty, whether it was owed to the plaintiff. The law acknowledges the relationship between the defendant and plaintiff, and the existing relation in turn may justify that the defendant is obliged to …show more content…
This gave her a massive shock. Due to the occurrence of the accident before her eyes, she has developed a psychiatric conditions that rendered her occupation as a primary school teacher. Amy is believed to be suffering from nervous shock from the trauma of what has happened. The court has pronounced that damages from nervous shock are claimable if it was reasonably foreseeable that someone of an intimate relation with the victim would have logically suffered a shock from the incident itself. It is essential to distinguish between primary and secondary victims when claiming for nervous shock. If the party was in danger of physical injury directly, there is no further doubts if psychiatric injury was even foreseeable; the claim is automatically approved because of the danger and presence of actual injury. The type of injury inflicted must be a recognised psychiatric illness as well. The court would consider if there were sufficient legal proximity under the 3 factors: Class of person, proximity of claimant to accident and means by which the shock was resulted. First, we must determine the class of person that Amy belonged to. Amy being the mother of the victim, Jane, appears to be an extremely valid relation with Jane to have had suffered any kind of shock form the incident. This satisfy the basic requirement for lodging a nervous shock claim. Second to be looked at would be the proximity of Amy to the accident. Since Amy was not injured physically in any way from the occurrence of the accident, she is very unlikely to qualify as a primary victim. However, she has every right to justify herself as a secondary victim. She was within the proximity to first, see Jane leaving from her balcony. Beyond just being noticed, she was even within sight of