Attia v British Gas Corporation [1987] EWCA Civ 8 (26 June 1987)

Mrs Attia witnessed her home burning for over four hours due to British Gas's negligent installation of central heating. She claimed damages for psychiatric illness caused by the shock of seeing her property destroyed. The Court of Appeal held that such claims are not barred as a matter of law where property damage alone causes foreseeable psychiatric injury.

Facts

The plaintiff, Mrs Attia, lived at No. 11 Leaver Gardens, Greenford, Middlesex. In summer 1981, the defendants, British Gas, were engaged to install central heating at her property. On 1st July 1981, whilst returning home at approximately 4 p.m., Mrs Attia saw smoke coming from the loft of her house. She telephoned the fire brigade, but by the time they arrived, the whole house was on fire. It took the firemen over four hours to bring the fire under control. The house and its contents were extensively damaged.

The defendants admitted that the fire was caused by their negligence, specifically the carelessness of their employees working at the house. Claims for damage to the house and contents were settled separately. The plaintiff’s remaining claim was for damages for nervous shock, alleging that witnessing her home and its contents ablaze caused her a psychiatric or mental illness.

Issues

The preliminary issue set down for determination was:

Can the plaintiff recover damages for nervous shock caused by witnessing her home and possessions damaged and/or destroyed by a fire caused by the defendants’ negligence while installing central heating in the plaintiff’s home?

The defendants contended that: (1) it was not reasonably foreseeable that the plaintiff might suffer psychiatric illness as a result of their negligence; and (2) as a matter of law and public policy, damages for nervous shock can only be recovered if caused by death or injury to a person, not merely by injury to property.

Judgment

Lord Justice Dillon

Dillon LJ held that the difficulty of proximity, which had arisen in previous nervous shock cases, did not arise here because the defendants unquestionably owed a duty of care to the plaintiff not to start a fire in her house. He stated he was not prepared to hold that the fact that the shock was caused by damage to property must preclude recovery for nervous shock if it was reasonably foreseeable. On foreseeability, he declined to make any general a priori ruling that psychiatric illness could never be a foreseeable consequence when a woman sees her home burning down. Whether the illness was foreseeable must depend on evidence at trial.

Lord Justice Woolf

Woolf LJ noted the test for foreseeability should follow Lord Reid’s statement in Czarnikow Ltd v Koufos:

The defendant will be liable for any type of damage which is reasonably foreseeable as liable to happen even in the most unusual case, unless the risk is so small that a reasonable man would in the whole circumstances feel justified in neglecting it.

He concluded the learned judge was not entitled to find psychiatric injury unforeseeable as a matter of law. Even assuming policy considerations could exclude liability, he could conceive of no overriding policy reason preventing recovery where the injury was foreseeable.

Lord Justice Bingham

Bingham LJ preferred to treat the question as one of remoteness rather than duty of care, given that a duty undeniably existed. He rejected the argument that recovery should be denied as a matter of policy simply because the trauma was caused by witnessing property destruction rather than personal injury. He provided examples where such a restriction would be unjust, such as a scholar witnessing destruction of their life’s work. On the floodgates argument, he stated that insistence on reasonably foreseeable psychiatric damage, properly defined, would enable judicial good sense to control claims appropriately.

Implications

This decision established that claims for psychiatric damage are not necessarily barred as a matter of law merely because the triggering event involved damage to property rather than personal injury. The court emphasised that where a duty of care exists and psychiatric damage is reasonably foreseeable, recovery may in principle be permitted. The case confirmed that the test for such claims remains one of reasonable foreseeability, and that questions of whether psychiatric damage was foreseeable in particular circumstances are questions of fact to be determined at trial rather than by preliminary issue. The decision extended the potential scope of claims for psychiatric injury beyond cases involving death or physical injury to persons.

Verdict: Appeal allowed; the order of the deputy judge was set aside; the case was remitted for trial on all live issues relating to reasonable foreseeability, causation and damage, on the footing that if the plaintiff succeeds on all these issues, her claim may in principle be upheld.

Source: Attia v British Gas Corporation [1987] EWCA Civ 8 (26 June 1987)