ABSTRACT
A second area where the nature of the damage is problematic is when the injury takes the form of nervous shock. The problem is twofold in as much as liability depends not just upon ‘the complexity of drawing the line between acute grief and psychiatric harm’,222 but frequently upon a certain structural formation between the parties involved. For the typical case of nervous shock often involves three parties. There is the defendant tortfeasor, an immediate victim threatened with, or actually suffering, personal injury or death and the claimant victim suffering shock at seeing the accident. This is not to say, of course, that nervous shock problems do not arise in two-party situations where the claimant is both the immediate victim and the sufferer.223 Thus, in one recent case, a plaintiff involved in a car accident caused by the defendant’s negligence, although not directly physically injured, was able to recover for the revival of a psychiatric illness (chronic fatigue syndrome).224 Equally, a rescuer may be treated as a primary victim if such a rescuer was him or herself in immediate physical danger from the dangerous situation caused by the defendant’s negligence. But the problematic cases often involve three parties.
