14

Death and Tort

STEVE HEDLEY

I. INTRODUCTION

‘T
ort’ covers a variety of claims. They are usually claims for
compensation, brought by someone who has suffered harm,
against someone else who is alleged to have been respon-
sible for that harm. The harm is usually personal injury of some kind,
although other types of harm are recognised (eg, injury to reputation or
to property interests) and the responsibility usually akes the form of a
‘duty of care’, that is, a legal duty to act with reasonable care and skill
to avoid harming the interests of others (also called a duty to avoid
‘negligence’). For current purposes, we can say that most tort cases
concern personal injuries allegedly caused by negligence, although for
completeness we need to mention injury to reputation or ‘defamation’
(ie ‘libel’ or slander’), interference with proprietary interests (‘trespass
to land’, ‘negligent damage to property’ and ‘nuisance’) and other
sorts of economic injury (including, in restricted circumstances, ‘purely
economic loss’).
How does death matter in all of this? There are really two questions, the
first rather easier to answer than the second:

1. What effect does the death of one party to a tort dispute have on that
dispute?
2. Does it make any difference whether the death was caused by the
other party, and/or was a consequence of the injuries the dispute was
about?

The second question really only arises in the context of personal injury
actions—in theory someone might die through indignation on being
libelled, but in practice these things don’t happen—and will be considered
later.
242 Steve Hedley

II. THE FIRST QUESTION: THE EFFECT OF DEATH ON TORT ACTIONS

The modern position, established since 1934, is that tort actions have a life
of their own, and do not die with either of the people involved in them. Put
more formally:
[O]n the death of any person ... all causes of action subsisting against or vested in
him shall survive against, or, as the case may be, for the benefit of, his estate(Law
Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934, section 1(1)).

This reversed the early common law rule that actio personalis moritur cum
persona—‘a personal action dies with the person’. In other words, it termi-
nates automatically on the death of either claimant or defendant. From the
early medieval perspective, of course, the old rule made quite a lot of sense:
common law was then concerned not so much with reaching a fair resolu-
tion of each dispute as with preventing extra-judicial resolution through
feud or vendetta. From that perspective, the death of one of the parties
constituted the end of the dispute.
The modern rule—that rights of action usually don’t die with either of
the people involved, even if they are ‘personal’ rights—is therefore the
opposite of the medieval rule. But the change is not quite as important as it
sounds. What the modern rule does is to ensure survival of rights of action.
If, at the instant before death, there was a right to sue, then that same right
is available after the death. But the right does not expand or grow. By and
large, nothing that occurs after the claimant’s death can be regarded as a
legal wrong to the claimant: nothing that happens to their body can be an
‘injury’; and they no longer have any property or other assets to be taken
from them. This branch of the law therefore pays little heed to dignity or
respect for the deceased, as discussed by Price (chapter twelve this volume;
the criminal law is different, see Herring, chapter thirteen this volume).
Again, dead people aren’t regarded as blameworthy, and so a case that the
defendant was responsible for some harm or other will have to be based
on the defendant’s pre-death behaviour. The effect of death is that all the
rights and liabilities accumulated up to that point are transferred to the
deceased’s estate, to be sorted out by the executors or administrators. It is
really just a more subtle application of the medieval approach, allowing
property disputes to continue (because, after all, someone must own the
property in dispute), but closing down more ‘personal’ disputes—not with
the abruptness of the medieval rule, but nonetheless quite firmly. The old
attitude still applies in very ‘personal’ disputes: actions for injury to reputa-
tion terminate with the death of either party (though this aspect of the 1934
Act has been criticised for failing to include other torts protecting merely
dignitary interests, such as false imprisonment); and claims for ‘exemplary
damages’—meant to call attention to outrageous breaches of duty—do not
survive the death of the claimant.
 Death and Tort 243

The general effect of death on tort claims, therefore, is to crystallise the

claim at that point. Any claims which existed immediately before the death
remain in existence, and must be resolved as part of the process of admin-
istering the deceased’s estate. Death neither increases nor reduces one’s
liabilities: it simply draws a convenient line under them.

III. THE SECOND QUESTION: WHAT IF THE DEATH IS THE INJURY

COMPLAINED OF?

What is the response of the law of tort where the very complaint being
made is that the defendant’s conduct resulted in the death?
In the early days of the common law, the maxim actio personalis moritur
cum persona applied, regardless of whether the death was the very thing
complained of. This sounds ludicrous to modern ears, but was more under-
standable in the light of the purposes of tort law at that date. If one of the
parties to a dispute was dead, then there was no longer a dispute for the
common law to resolve. If the death didn’t seem fair or just, well, death
rarely was.
The law was not completely helpless, however. If a particular person
could be identified as responsible for the death, then a plea of felony could
be made, resulting in official action against the killer. Sometimes the official
response included an order for reasonable compensation, to prevent the dead
man’s relatives taking more drastic measures (Baker, 1979: 411–13). There
was also the curious doctrine of the deodand, by which a physical object
which had caused a death was forfeit, a process which sometimes meant
that the deceased’s relatives received a share of the thing’s value (Sutton,
1997; and Baker, 1979: 322). But all of these processes were increasingly
exploited for the benefit of the officials involved in them, depriving the vic-
tim’s family of any financial remedy. The procedures in cases of feud quietly
evolved into something resembling modern criminal law, being confined to
cases of murder and manslaughter, and with the killer being punished not
for the injury to others but for breach of fealty owed to the King. All his
assets were forfeit, but they went to the King and not to the victim’s family.
And the profits of the deodand were quietly appropriated for the officials
involved. So by 1600, the actio personalis maxim governed completely:
death of either party to personal injury litigation terminated it; and causing
the death of another was not a ground for civil action.
Change did not come until the 1840s, when the spread of the railways
across Britain led to an increasing number of injuries and deaths. The fact
that injured railway passengers could sue, but dead ones could not, became
something of a public scandal. Inventive lawyers revived the antique action
for a deodand, which in its 19th-century form no longer permitted for-
feiture of the railway engine involved in the death, but allowed juries to
244 Steve Hedley

impose fines on the railway companies—which they did with enthusiasm.

This situation was then skilfully used by the Chief Justice of the day as a
bargaining chip, promoting a Bill to abolish deodand as anachronistic, but
insisting that the price of reform was the introduction of personal injury
liability on more modern lines (Kostal, 1994: 289). The result was the
Fatal Accidents Act 1846, which created a cause of action in favour of the
dependants of the deceased. The basic principle having been conceded, later
reforms were less controversial. Abolition of the actio personalis rule in all
but a handful of cases was effected in 1934, and the dependency action has
since been restated and broadened.
So by the time the modern rule—that tort actions survive the deaths of
the parties to them—was introduced, a great many decisions as to the func-
tion and scope of tort law had already been made, and were not lightly to
be disturbed. In principle, from 1934 onwards, the death of the claimant
could be regarded as an injury for which compensation could be given. But
the wording of the statute does not encourage this—‘the damages … shall
be calculated without reference to any loss or gain to his estate consequent
on his death’—and the rules on damages ensure that any such claim comes
to nothing (Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934, section
1(2)). There is an exception for funeral expenses. Death of the claimant
is only rarely a ground for increasing damages, and frequently a ground
for reducing them. If it is asked: ‘What price does tort put on a life?’ the
answer is in the region of £0. The only substantial claim allowed is that of
dependent relatives, who can demand at least part of the income stream
they would have received had the death not occurred.
The tort lawyer’s attitude to death was therefore established well before
the massive expansion of claims which occurred over the 20th century,
and the result of which is so much a matter of political debate today.
Personal injury actions in the early 21st century in fact overwhelmingly
focus on very particular sources of injury: injuries at work, on the roads
and through negligent health care together account for over 95 per cent
of all claims. Official and unofficial insurance arrangements ensure that
claims proceed in a routine manner. The people supposedly in dispute
with one another actually have very little to do with the process: the claim
proceeds in much the same way whether claimant and defendant are alive
or dead—indeed, the defendant is in practice almost invariably an insur-
ance company, and so was only ‘alive’ in a rather technical sense in the
first place. (In road accident cases, the defendant is nominally the driver
whose driving caused the accident, although in practice this individual
has little to do with the processes that follow.) The court’s response to
the accident can only consist of an award of money, and the decisions
on whether an award is payable and if so how large it should be, depend
on relatively abstract rules, which only occasionally mention death as a
special case.
 Death and Tort 245

A. Death: Liability

The classic statements of negligence liability make no special mention of

death. Indeed, such statements are classic precisely because they ignore
irrelevant particulars and focus at precisely the right level of abstraction.
So, as each new class of tort students learns, the duty on the defendant in
negligence cases goes like this:

You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reason-
ably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who then, in law, is my
neighbour? The answer seems to be—persons who are so closely and directly
affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as
being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which
are called in question (Donoghue v Stevenson1).

Death is therefore one of a range of things which might ‘injure your neigh-
bour’ or ‘affect’ him or her. It is obviously at the higher end of seriousness
in that regard: creating a risk of accidental death, even a quite small one,
makes it ‘likely’ that your ‘neighbour’ will be ‘affected’ by your conduct.
Accordingly, the range of people you ‘ought reasonably to have … in con-
templation as being so affected’ can be quite broad, and can include people
who wouldn’t normally have any hope of a claim against you.
So when the claimants’ lawyers look back on a chain of events that
ultimately led to a death, they are looking for a defendant who ought rea-
sonably to have foreseen the possibility of injury, and who then acted in a
manner which was insufficiently careful in the light of that possibility. Does
it matter that death resulted? It matters in the sense that serious injuries
are taken more seriously: defendants are expected to think further ahead if
serious injuries are possible; more care is expected of them; and defendants
receive less sympathy if they argue that the loss was too ‘remote’, that is,
too unlikely a prospect to contemplate before the event. But there is no
great difference in attitude in death cases and cases of serious injuries.
Indeed, while in practice it is hard to avoid completely, nonetheless the
courts will be adamant that these cases are not to be judged with hindsight.
The question is not how we view the facts now that we know a death has
resulted, but how the defendant should have viewed them before the event,
when injury was a mere possibility. Death is therefore special in this context
because it is an exceptionally severe consequence, with an unfavourable
prognosis. However, the rules on damages then take most of that signifi-
cance away, reducing most claims by dead claimants’ estates to very low
figures indeed.

1 Donoghue v Stevenson, [1932] AC 562 (HL) 580, Lord Atkin.

246 Steve Hedley

B. Death: Damages—Claims by the Estate

As to the calculation of damages for death, a brief introduction to damages

generally is necessary. Early 19th century damages law left the ascertain-
ment of the precise sum in these cases to juries, which were forbidden to
give a reason for their verdicts. While the trial judge or appeal court might
strike down an apparently unreasonable award, this was relatively rare.
But over the late 19th and early 20th centuries, judicial willingness to go
along with high awards distinctly lessened. The causes are not very clear,
but almost certainly included the increasing number of claims, the practi-
cal impossibility of concealing from the jury whether the claim was to be
met by insurers, and the increasing democratisation of juries as a result
of universal suffrage. Whatever the cause, by the 1930s a jury was only
summoned in a personal injuries case if an exceptionally strong case to
that effect was made to the trial judge, which rarely happened. Later cases
changed ‘rarely’ to ‘almost never’ (see especially Ward v James 2).
Assessment was therefore left in the hands of the trial judges, who in the
early years felt free to be almost as inscrutable as juries, simply awarding
a sum or sums under very broad heads such as ‘pain and suffering’ or ‘loss
of income’. Again, appeal courts would only rarely hold any award to be
unreasonable. In time, however, a more systematic approach was adopted.
The turning point was in 1970, where the Court ofAppeal laid down that
precise itemisation of each award was mandatory (see Jefford v Gee3;
George v Pinnock4). It was increasingly recognised that efficient dispute
resolution involved minimising court hearings, and that predictability of
result was far more valuable than any supposed benefit from allowing indi-
vidual judicial scrutiny of each case. In the light of those considerations, the
modern law aims at greater and greater precision. Personal injuries claims
boast a 99 per cent settlement rate, unusually high for any area of contested
litigation, and which would be quite impossible if individual judges were
able to differ sharply on the amounts they could award.
In the modern law, while of course any loss suffered by the claimant in
consequence of the defendant’s tort may be itemised and proved (as ‘special
damages’), the courts expect the ‘general damages’ for personal injury to
fall under these five heads:

1. Pain and suffering

2. Loss of the amenities of life
3. Loss of future earnings
4. Loss of earning capacity
5. Future expenses
2 Ward v James [1966] 1 QB 273 (CA).
3 Jefford v Gee [1970] 2 QB 130 (CA).
4 George v Pinnock [1973] 1 WLR 118 (CA).
 Death and Tort 247

The last three items are ‘pecuniary’ items, meant to represent as accurately
as possible sums lost or bills incurred as a result of the injury. The first
two ‘non-pecuniary’ items are attempts to capture the injury to feelings
entailed by the accident, and bear no relationship to any other sum of
money involved in the facts. The relative size of the ‘non-pecuniaries’
usually depends on the severity of the case. Where the injury is medically
relatively trivial—so the injury is largely to the claimant’s dignity and sense
of well-being—the ‘non-pecuniary’ sum may constitute the bulk of the
award. At the other end of the scale, say where a high-earning claimant
comes out of the accident as a quadriplegic requiring constant care, then
the figures for loss of earnings and for future expenses will be very large,
and the figure for non-pecuniary loss, while substantial, will be nowhere
near as great.
To get an idea of the value put on life itself, we need to look at the items
one by one:

(i) Pain and Suffering

The court asks how great the pain was, what its quality was, and
how long it lasted. These figures are largely conventional. While
ultimately a court might resolve such a case by gut feeling, the first
resort of lawyers and judges is past precedent. As a matter of theory,
this head of damages is rather unprincipled, the more glaringly so as
greater and greater efforts go into refining the other heads. The sums

could be multiplied or divided by two overnight and they would be just

as defensible or indefensible as they are today (Cane, 1993: 139).

Some writers insist that there must be a genuine attempt to ascertain

how much pain the particular claimant is or has been in, suggest-
ing that otherwise the entire exercise is a sham. Others, including
a significant number of trial judges, are aghast at any emphasis on
individual suffering, because they imagine it will lead to increasing
protestations by claimants that they are in agony—protestations
which in some cases the judges suspect to be merely strategic.
However, this general lack of satisfactory theoretical backing is not
usually seen as a reason to cut back on these damages. On the con-
trary, the Court of Appeal recently increased them substantially, on
the ground that insufficient allowance for inflation had been made
in the past (Heil v Rankin5). Statute provides that the knowledge
that the accident has shortened the claimant’s life is to be reflected
in the award for pain and suffering. (Administration of Justice Act
1982, section 1(1)). The Act also abolished ‘loss of expectation of

5 Heil v Rankin [2001] QB 72 (CA).

248 Steve Hedley

life’ as a distinct head of damages. This had previously been an

entirely conventional, free-standing sum (Benham v Gambling6).
The death of the claimant, however, is not seen as attracting gen-
erous damages here. On the contrary, death is seen as terminating
any suffering involved and damages for pain and suffering are given
only for the period between the accident and the death. It follows
that no damages at all are awarded under this head in a case where
death instantaneously follows the defendant’s negligence, or if the
accident instantaneously rendered the claimant unconscious, and
death ensued without consciousness ever being regained. It has also
consistently been held that even the most painful death does not in
itself attract an award for pain and suffering: the last few moments
of mental agony and pain are in reality part of the death itself, for
which no action lies under the 1934 Act (Hicks v Chief Constable of
South Yorkshire Police7).
This can be seen as mildly paradoxical: ordinary pain and suffer-
ing merits compensation, whereas an agonising death does not. A
possible resolution of the paradox is that an ordinary award can be
seen as a sop to bruised feelings, whereas a dead person is incapable
of having their feelings so mollified; no sum of money will make any
difference to how they feel, so the courts may as well give nothing
as something. There is probably some truth in this, though it invites
the question of why awards for pre-death pain and suffering survive
to the estate at all, as the same could be said of those—by the time
the damages are paid, they can do nothing to alleviate the feelings
they are supposed to compensate for (for an example of such an
award see Watson v Willmott8). But issues of that sort cannot really
be resolved on any principled basis until we first have a principled
basis for assessing pain-and-suffering damages, which the lawyers
do not have, and suspect that no one else does either.
(ii) Loss of the Amenities of Life
This head attempts to compensate for the fact that the injury did
not simply inflict pain but also deprived the claimant of opportuni-
ties for enjoyment of life. The court therefore asks the extent to
which the accident lowered the claimant’s emotional quality of life,
and in particular whether the injury prevented or interfered with the
claimant’s hobbies, sex life, social life, or ability to relax.
This award also is highly reliant on past precedents, and in most
situations is in practice part of the same enquiry as for ascertaining
pain and suffering damages—if indeed the two are distinguished
from one another at all. For some limited purposes, the two are

6 Benham v Gambling [1941] AC 157 (HL).

7 Hicks v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 All ER 690 (CA).
8 Watson v Willmott [1991] 1 QB 140 (QB).
 Death and Tort 249

distinguished. So, claimants who are in a persistent vegetative state

as a result of the accident receive no damages for pain and suffering
because, so far as the court can tell, they aren’t in pain, but they have
received substantial sums for loss of amenity because this represents a
genuine loss, whether or not the claimants are aware of it (West and
Son v Shepherd9). However, this ‘logic’ has never yet been used to
justify an award in respect of a period after death (see Grubb, 2002:
7.11). Death marks the end of any compensatable loss of amenity.
(iii) Loss of Future Earnings
Earnings lost as a result of the injury are usually assessed on a
multiplier-multiplicand basis, that is to say the court multiplies two
figures:
• The multiplicand, consisting of a ‘typical’ year’s earnings of the
claimant—usually taken to be his/her earnings in the year imme-
diately preceding the accident; and
• The multiplier, which is meant to reflect the number of years over
which the loss will be suffered. The multiplier will be lower than
the actual number of years involved: a claimant who suffers a
five-year drop in earnings is over-compensated by a multiplier of
five, as the damages will consist of a lump sum received consider-
ably before the lost wages would have been paid. The multiplier
therefore reflects not only the length of time over which the injury
persists, but also a discount for the early receipt of the money.
There is also some attempt made to reflect hypothetical future
contingencies, such as (in the claimant’s favour) lost chances of
promotion and (on the defendant’s side) the chance of other acci-
dental injury.
The calculations here have become increasingly sophisticated, as
pro-claimant or pro-defendant lobbyists are able to point to sys-
tematic bias against them. In particular, the rather impressionistic
approach, in the earlier cases, to selection of the multiplier was
convincingly shown to favour defendants (because the courts tended
to over-estimate contingencies which might have reduced the claim-
ant’s income for other reasons), and as a result the courts are now
directed to official tables for the calculation of multipliers, which
incorporate actuarial data on income and age (formal provision
for the use of these ‘Ogden Tables’ is made by the Civil Evidence
Act 1995, section 10). Ferocious battles between rival lobby groups
routinely occur over the size of the discount for early receipt, cur-
rently set at 2.5 per cent (Damages (Personal Injury) Order 2001).
The Court of Appeal regards itself as free to depart from this figure
where sufficient cause is shown (Warriner v Warriner10). There are

9 West and Son v Shepherd [1964] AC 326 (HL).

10 Warriner v Warriner [2002] EWCA Civ 81.
250 Steve Hedley

currently moves towards allowing the court to avoid much of the

problem by encouraging the award of a tax-free annuity (a ‘struc-
tured settlement’) rather than a lump sum in damages.
The effect of the claimant’s death on the future earnings claim
has followed a convoluted path. In 1962, the Court of Appeal
considered such a ‘lost years’ claim, where but for the accident the
claimant would probably have been in remunerative employment,
but on the facts as they stood was expected to have died. They
ruled that there was no claim for earnings in those ‘lost years’:
while the loss was genuine enough in purely financial terms, an
award of that sum would not correct this injustice. A dead man
does not feel any better, or even any richer, by being presented
with a large sum for lost wages (Oliver v Ashman11). However,
this reasoning was rejected as being over-simplistic by the House
of Lords in 1980. The deceased does indeed not suffer a loss in
any real sense, but his/her dependants do, and awarding a sum
for earnings in the ‘lost years’ compensates for that loss (Pickett v
British Rail Engineering Ltd12). As a result, the court should calcu-
late the extent of the wages lost, then deduct from it the bare mini-
mum cost of living for the same period, which, on the logic of this
claim, is an expense which the claimant has saved as a result of the
accident—on the calculation of this saved expense see especially
Harris v Empress Motors Ltd13. The resulting figure, calculated
on a multiplier-multiplicand basis, is payable as damages. Opinion
was divided on whether this award of ‘wages in heaven’ was fair.
In 1982, Parliament ruled that while the injustice to dependants
implicit in the earlier approach was real enough, it did not arise
where those dependants could make a claim of their own under
the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 (considered below). Accordingly, the
‘wages in heaven’ claim can only be made by a live claimant, this
head of claim terminating with his/her death (Administration of
Justice Act 1982, section 1(2)).
(iv) Loss of Earning Capacity
This head of damages, which is less relevant for present purposes,
only arises where there is a substantial loss of earnings which is not
amenable to the multiplier-multiplicand approach—typically where a
young claimant of uncertain prospects is rendered unemployable by the
effects of the accident. Even in a case such as that, the modern tendency
is to apply the multiplier-multiplicand measure on the assumption that
the claimant would, but for the accident, have earned the national
average wage. Death of the claimant terminates such a claim.

11 Oliver v Ashman [1962] 2 QB 210 (CA).

12 Pickett v British Rail Engineering Ltd [1980] AC 136 (HL).
13 Harris v Empress Motors Ltd [1983] 3 All ER 561 (CA).
 Death and Tort 251

(v) Future Expenses

Medical care and other expenses attributable to the accident are
recoverable as part of the award. Where such needs are long-term,
they are reduced to damages on the same multiplier-multiplicand
basis as has already been discussed. The calculations are simplest
when all such services are likely to be paid for. The damages then
reflect the likely cost. Increasingly, the courts are according monetary
value to care given on a voluntary basis: where the necessary care
will be provided by family members, a figure for the value of that
care may be included in the damages (eg, Housecroft v Burnett14).
It is not yet entirely clear whether that sum, when paid, belongs to
the victim or to the carer (Grubb, 2002: paragraph 6.65). Clearly,
the main effect of death on this head of damages is to limit it: dead
people do not require medical care.
In summary, therefore, personal injury damages law places a value of £0 on
each life involved. Technically speaking, damages are not awarded for the
death, but for the injury suffered. The fact that the injury resulting from
the defendant’s conduct proves fatal is not in itself a compensatable item,
though (anomalously) a defendant who caused a death is liable for reason-
able funeral expenses. The damages

shall be calculated without reference to any loss or gain to his estate consequent
on his death, except that a sum in respect of funeral expenses may be included
(Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934, section 1(2)(c)).

The inclusion of these expenses is anomalous, because the cost of a funeral is

merely an accelerated expense—the deceased’s estate would eventually have
had to pay for a funeral anyway, whatever the defendants had or had not
done. In other respects, the claim is limited to losses already suffered at the
instant before death, and no further damages are recoverable for the period
after death. The claimant no longer experiences pain or suffering, is taken
to require nothing further for loss of the amenities of life, will not miss the
wages that will not be earned, and will have no expenses in the future. So the
overall effect of the death is to benefit the defendant rather than the claim-
ant. This approach may seem striking at first glance, but it is in fact merely
a none-too-surprising consequence of focussing on compensation alone. If
it is said that tort seems incapable of expressing outrage at an unnecessary
death, or of inflicting just punishment on those who caused it, the answer is
that expressing outrage and inflicting punishment are not recognised goals of
tort law. Where tort would be open to criticism in its own terms would be
if the dependants of the deceased did not receive just compensation. To that
question I now turn.

14 Housecroft v Burnett [1986] 1 All ER 332 (CA).

252 Steve Hedley

C. Death: Damages—The Dependency Claim

The main claim today remains the one introduced in 1846, though it has
been restated and slightly expanded since. Briefly, if someone dies as the
result of a tort, and if at their death they had one or more dependants,
then those dependants acquire a cause of action against the tortfeasor for
the value of the dependency. Not all dependants can sue in this way—the
statute (the Fatal Accidents Act 1976) has a precise list of which relatives
can sue, although today it’s a pretty extensive list.
The dependency claim is unique as far as I know, and certainly has some
non-standard features. The claim belongs to the dependants, not to the
deceased person, although it is administered through the deceased’s estate.
It arises only where the deceased would have been able to sue if he or she
had survived, and is defeated by any defence that would have been good
against the deceased. In particular, if the deceased was r per cent respon-
sible for the accident, the dependency claim is reduced by r per cent (Fatal
Accidents Act 1976, section 5, see Appendix). In principle each dependant
has an individual claim for their lost part of the dependency, although the
statute says that all of the claims are to be handled together by the executor
(Fatal Accidents Act 1976, section 2). It takes a purely factual criterion—
the amount of income which would have been paid but for the defendant’s
misconduct—and substitutes a legal right to its continuance. This ‘depen-
dency’ bears no necessary resemblance either to any right of maintenance
the dependant could legally have demanded from the deceased, or to the
amount they can demand when the deceased’s estate is divided up. The
build-up of case law reveals a gradual expansion of the concept of the
‘dependency’. The courts have been prepared to include and to estimate a
dependency which they imagine would have come into an existence later if
the death had not occurred (Taff Vale Railway Co v Jenkins15). Moreover,
the courts have since the 1970s begun to hold that the ‘dependency’ need
not consist of money—so the death of a family member not in employ-
ment leads the court to assess the value of their services at home, which
sum is then the basis of a dependency (eg Hay v Hughes16; accidents in the
home are rarely the subject of tort actions, so these claims are relatively
infrequent).
The statutory list of dependants of course mirrors the legislators’ con-
cepts of what a family looks like. The original 1846 list included only the
deceased’s spouse, parents, grandparents, step-parents, children, grand-
children and step-children. The 1976 list, now in force, seeks to be more
inclusive, including all descendants and ascendants of the deceased, as well
as brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts, and their children (Fatal Accidents

15 Taff Vale Railway Co v Jenkins [1913] AC 1 (HL).

16 Hay v Hughes [1975] QB 790 (CA).
 Death and Tort 253

Act 1976, section 1). Children treated by the deceased as part of the family
are also included. Marriage is still of some significance under the detailed
rules, but no longer has commanding status: illegitimate children have the
same entitlement as legitimate, and anyone cohabiting ‘as the husband or
wife of the deceased’ receives the same rights as a spouse, provided that the
cohabitation had lasted at least two years (Fatal Accidents Act 1976, section
1(3); for some of the difficulties involved in the cohabitation provision, see
Kotke v Saffarini17). The recent introduction of civil partnerships included
modifications to the 1976 Act, so that civil partners have the same rights as
spouses, and relationships can be established through civil partnership as
well as by blood or by marriage (Civil Partnership Act 2004, section 83).
The live question today is whether the list continues to serve a purpose, or
whether it could simply be abolished. The Law Commission wants to bring
in a general clause which would allow any person actually or potentially
dependent on the deceased to bring a claim (Law Commission for England
and Wales, 1999: paragraph 3.46).
Traditionally, the claim was strictly for money lost: the ‘dependency’
was financial only, usually calculated on a multiplier-multiplicand basis. It
included the anomalous claim for reasonable funeral expenses. But not a
penny more was allowed for emotional pain. However, the narrow traditional
conception of the claim has not proved satisfactory to all, and various rather
ad hoc compromises have been introduced. If the widow of a deceased man
remarries and her new husband is a wealthier or more generous provider,
then on this narrow conception the dependency will be very low or even
non-existent: the death has not caused the widow a significant financial loss.
Therefore, a common tactic by defence counsel in the early 20th century was
to parade the more attractive claimant widows before the court, to support
an argument that a future profitable re-marriage was very likely (the ‘cattle
market’ approach, as it was known). Outrage at this manoeuvre eventually
led to a change in the law in 1971, so that the actual or potential re-marriage
of a claimant widow is ignored (Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provision) Act
1971, section 1, now consolidated into the Fatal Accidents Act 1976, section
3(3)). The absence of any provision for non-financial loss was addressed in
1982, when legislation allowed for the claim to include a sum for ‘bereave-
ment’, not corresponding to any financial loss. This is currently set at
£10,000 (Damages for Bereavement (Variation of Sum) (England and Wales)
Order, 2002). If the deceased was married, the sum belongs to their spouse;
if he or she was an unmarried legitimate minor, it belongs to both his or her
parents; if an unmarried illegitimate minor, then to her mother; otherwise,
the sum is not claimable (Fatal Accidents Act, 1976, section 1A, inserted by
the Administration of Justice Act 1982, section 3). This is obviously a little
arbitrary, but then so would be any suggested replacement formula.

17 Kotke v Saffarini [2005] EWCA Civ 221.

254 Steve Hedley

So, in summary, the injury done to those left behind by the death is seen
as interference with their ‘dependency’, an unusual sort of a right to say the
least. While, as I have shown, the tendency has been to expand the rights
available here, nonetheless the rate of expansion has been slow. Are there
any other avenues open to those who had been close to the deceased, before
he or she was deceased?

D. Death: Damages—Secondary Nervous Shock Claims

A relatively unexplored route, though it is becoming more well-known,

is to track the emotional effects of the death and to see which of their
consequences can constitute actionable wrongs. This can take the court
down strange doctrinal alley-ways (see particularly AB v Leeds Teaching
Hospital NHS Trust18). The older, and to lawyers most familiar, route to
liability here is the law of ‘nervous shock’. A nervous shock claimant has
to show that they have suffered an injury, which usually consists of show-
ing that they have a recognised psychiatric disorder, such as post-traumatic
shock disorder (PTSD). A claimant with such an injury, who can show that
it resulted from the activities of the defendant, will then have to show that
this was in breach of a duty owed by that defendant. This is relatively easy
if the claimant was foreseeably at risk from the defendant’s activities: if any
reasonable person could have seen that carelessness by the defendant posed
a risk of injury to the claimant (by reason of their physical or emotional
proximity to the deceased), then a duty is owed, and the negligent defen-
dant is liable for any injuries which result. That is the easy case, where the
claimant is a ‘primary victim’ of the defendant’s activities. The more diffi-
cult case is where there never was any danger to the claimant, but rather to
someone else of psychological significance to the claimant. The claimant’s
shock results not because they were themselves in danger but because of
what they see or hear, whether the deceased’s injuries occurred before their
very eyes, or in another sufficiently shocking way. Such ‘secondary victims’
are often allowed to recover damages, but under very restrictive rules.
So where a death occurs as the result of the defendant’s negligence, and
the claimant’s reaction to this death can be regarded as a psychiatric injury,
then liability can be established, provided that the injury is sufficiently
direct. ‘Directness’ for this purpose is not at all well defined, although it is
agreed that the main factors are directness of perception (seeing someone
being mangled to death is more shocking than reading that they have been
mangled to death) and directness of relationship (the death of your child
is more shocking than the death of a stranger). The current law tries as far
as possible to treat shock as one injury with special features rather than as

18 AB v Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust [2004] EWHC 644 (QB).

 Death and Tort 255

something wholly distinct from the rest of negligence law. The results are
not, however, altogether satisfactory, and the law is in constant develop-
ment as the judges flit from one awkward compromise to another.
As to injury, the current approach is that injury is sufficiently established
if there is a recognised psychiatric condition. Quite apart from any changes
in legal attitude (and the courts tend to make major innovations here
on a regular basis) the definition of ‘injury’ will fluctuate with whatever
psychiatric knowledge can be brought to bear on the particular case—the
law shows a deference to medical knowledge which it shows only patchily
in other contexts (see Jackson, chapter three this volume; and Chau and
Herring, chapter two this volume). PTSD is now a sufficiently well-estab-
lished condition to count as an ‘injury’ for this purpose and most nervous
shock cases are variants on this. But borderline cases are not uncommon. In
the case of Vernon v Bosley (No 1),19 for example, the Court of Appeal had
the unedifying task of deciding whether a father’s reaction to the loss of his
daughters by drowning constituted ‘pathological grief disorder’ (an injury
for which he could be compensated) or was ‘merely’ a severe grief reaction
(not an injury, and so not compensatable). The objections to this approach
are obvious: the knowledge that a sum in the order of half a million pounds
hung on the precise label the courts placed on his mental state cannot have
assisted his recovery. Further, it posed substantial temptations, which the
father did not resist to the courts’ satisfaction: success in his personal injury
action depended on showing that his condition was severe and long-last-
ing, whereas success in his family proceedings depended on showing the
reverse—and a comparison of the evidence in those two separate actions
made sorry reading indeed (see Vernon v Bosley (No 2)20). The line drawn
is plainly not satisfactory, but the courts currently see no other possibility
short of holding that ‘mere’ grief is actionable, which for them would be a
step too far.
As to directness, the criteria are reasonably well established: how direct
was the claimant’s perception of the death? What was it that they actually
perceived? Did they know the victim before the accident, and if so, did
they care very much about what happened to him or her? These tests are
easy enough to apply and the law seems relatively stable. The worry is, of
course, that it is all nonsense, that it takes psychiatric commonplaces about
who is likely to suffer shock, and turns them into moral injunctions. No
doubt someone who suffers PTSD over a death they did not see, and/or
whose victim they did not know, is unusual, but it is not clear how they
can be stigmatised as a person of ‘insufficient psychological firmness’ and
therefore undeserving of compensation (the requirement that the claimant
demonstrate ‘the customary phlegm’ or come up to ‘a normal standard of

19 Vernon v Bosley [1997] 1 All ER 577 (CA).

20 Vernon v Bosley (No 2) [1999] QB 18 (CA).
256 Steve Hedley

susceptibility’ derives from Bourhill v Young21). This is only one step away
from saying that they should buck their ideas up and stop whingeing, which
would not usually be seen as an appropriate response to a sufferer from a
recognised disorder. For this reason, there is almost universal agreement
amongst academics that the ‘directness of perception’ criterion should be
abolished, though the ‘directness of relation’ criterion has rather more
defenders.
In these ‘nervous shock’ cases, courts here are uncomfortably caught
between two realities, one psychological and the other political. The psy-
chological reality is that the injury caused by the death of a loved one is as
real as any of the injuries the courts are more used to dealing with, and no
legally valid reason for treating it less generously has been discovered. The
contrary belief held by the legal system in the past represents not ancient
wisdom but pre-scientific ignorance, deriving largely from an exaggerated
fear of ‘compensation neurosis’. The competing political reality is that giv-
ing full weight to the seriousness of such psychological injuries would cause
a major storm, in the course of which the judges would be trenchantly criti-
cised for encouraging a ‘culture of compensation’. But the uneasy middle
course the judges have followed is not really satisfactory from any point
of view. The continual resort to psychiatric concepts is a particularly glar-
ing example of buck-passing—no doubt there are arguments both for and
against psychiatric recognition of ‘pathological grief disorder’, but none of
them have to do with whether compensation should be paid to the sufferer.
No doubt the line will continue to be blurred for quite a while yet.

IV. CONCLUSION

As a generalisation, therefore, the effect of death in a tort action is to wind

it up, enabling a firm line to be drawn under the liabilities and the matter
to be settled on the basis of how things stood at the instant before death.
This is so even where the death of the claimant was itself the fault of the
defendant, although in that case the deceased’s relatives may argue that
they have suffered a fresh injury, in the form of damage to their economic
‘dependency’ or (possibly) nervous shock.
In some ways this is surprising, shocking even. It can certainly lead to
surprising results. Suppose the defendant’s negligent driving results in the
death of a 30-year-old adult, who had been a high earner with good pros-
pects of promotion. As a result of the accident, however, the victim dies
without ever regaining consciousness. If it turns out that this 30-year-old
had dependants, the claim will probably be in the millions; if not, the claim
will be limited to the cost of torn clothing and other property damaged in

21 Bourhill v Young [1943] AC 92 (HL).

 Death and Tort 257

the accident, plus a reasonable sum for funeral expenses. Viewed in terms
of the defendant’s moral culpability, this makes little sense. But then it is a
very long time since the law of personal injury was an exercise in morality,
if indeed it ever was.

APPENDIX

Fatal Accidents Act 1976

Sections 1 and 1A are reproduced here. These texts were inserted by the
Administration of Justice Act 1982, section 3. [Square brackets] indicate
amendments currently in force.

1. Right of Action for Wrongful Act Causing Death

(1) If death is caused by any wrongful act, neglect or default which is

such as would (if death had not ensued) have entitled the person
injured to maintain an action and recover damages in respect thereof,
the person who would have been liable if death had not ensued shall
be liable to an action for damages, notwithstanding the death of the
person injured.
(2) Subject to section 1A(2) below, every such action shall be for the
benefit of the dependants of the person (‘the deceased’) whose death
has been so caused.
(3) In this Act ‘dependant’ means—
(a) the wife or husband or former wife or husband of the deceased;
[(aa) the civil partner or former civil partner of the deceased;]
(b) any person who—
(i) was living with the deceased in the same household immedi-
ately before the date of the death; and
(ii) had been living with the deceased in the same household for
at least two years before that date; and
(iii) was living during the whole of that period as the husband or
wife [or civil partner] of the deceased;
(c) any parent or other ascendant of the deceased;
(d) any person who was treated by the deceased as his parent;
(e) any child or other descendant of the deceased;
(f) any person (not being a child of the deceased) who, in the case
of any marriage to which the deceased was at any time a party,
was treated by the deceased as a child of the family in relation
to that marriage;
[(fa) any person (not being a child of the deceased) who, in the case
of any civil partnership in which the deceased was at any time a
258 Steve Hedley

civil partner, was treated by the deceased as a child of the family

in relation to that civil partnership;]
(g) any person who is, or is the issue of, a brother, sister, uncle or
aunt of the deceased.
(4) The reference to the former wife or husband of the deceased in sub-
section (3)(a) above includes a reference to a person whose marriage
to the deceased has been annulled or declared void as well as a person
whose marriage to the deceased has been dissolved.
[(4A) The reference to the former civil partner of the deceased in subsection
(3)(aa) above includes a reference to a person whose civil partnership
with the deceased has been annulled as well as a person whose civil
partnership with the deceased has been dissolved.]
(5) In deducing any relationship for the purposes of subsection (3) above—
(a) any relationship [by marriage or civil partnership] shall be
treated as a relationship by consanguinity, any relationship of
the half blood as a relationship of the whole blood, and the
stepchild of any person as his child, and
(b) an illegitimate person shall be treated as the legitimate child of
his mother and reputed father.
(6) Any reference in this Act to injury includes any disease and any
impairment of a person’s physical or mental condition.

1A. Bereavement

(1) An action under this Act may consist of or include a claim for dam-
ages for bereavement.
(2) A claim for damages for bereavement shall only be for the benefit—
(a) of the wife or husband [or civil partner] of the deceased; and
(b) where the deceased was a minor who was never married [or a
civil partner]—
(i) of his parents, if he was legitimate; and
(ii) of his mother, if he was illegitimate.
(3) Subject to subsection (5) below, the sum to be awarded as damages
under this section shall be [£10,000].
(4) Where there is a claim for damages under this section for the benefit
of both the parents of the deceased, the sum awarded shall be divided
equally between them (subject to any deduction falling to be made in
respect of costs not recovered from the defendant).
(5) The Lord Chancellor may by order made by statutory instrument,
subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of
Parliament, amend this section by varying the sum for the time being
specified in subsection (3) above.
 Death and Tort 259

REFERENCES

Publications

Baker, J (1979) An introduction to English Legal History, 2nd edn (London,

Butterworths).
Cane, P (1993) Atiyah’s Accidents Compensation and the Law, 5th edn (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press).
Grubb, A (ed) (2002) The Law of Tort (London, Butterworths).
Kostal, R (1994) Law and English Railway Capitalism 1825–1875 (Oxford,
Oxford University Press).
Law Commission for England and Wales (1999) Claims for wrongful death LAW
COM No 263 (London, Law Commission).
Sutton, T (1997) ‘The deodand and responsibility for death’ 18 Journal of Legal
History 44–55.

Legislation

Administration of Justice Act 1982.

Civil Evidence Act 1995.
Civil Partnership Act 2004.
Damages (Personal Injury) Order 2001 (SI 2001/2301).
Damages for Bereavement (Variation of Sum) (England and Wales) Order 2002 (SI
2002/644).
Fatal Accidents Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict, c 93)
Fatal Accidents Act 1976.
Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934.
Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provision) Act 1971.