Liability for suicide

Corr v IBC Vehicles Ltd H of L TLR 28 February

Thomas Corr suffered a serious accident at work as a result of the defendant’s breach of duty. Because of the accident, Mr Corr had become depressed, his condition worsened with the passage of time and while suffering from an episode of severe depression, he committed suicide. The inescapable fact was that depression, possibly severe, had been a foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s breach. The principle that a tortfeasor, who reasonably foresaw the occurrence of some damage, need not foresee the precise form that the damage might take, applied. Some manifestations of severe depression might be so unusual and unpredictable as to be outside the bounds of what was reasonably foreseeable, but suicide could not be so regarded. The rationale of the principle that a novus actus interveniens broke the chain of causation was fairness. It was not fair to hold a tortfeasor liable for damage caused by some independent, supervening cause for which he was not responsible. That was no less so where the independent, supervening cause was a voluntary, informed decision taken by the victim as an adult of sound mind making and giving effect to a personal decision about his own future. Mr Corr’s suicide had not been such a decision. It had been the response of a man suffering from a severely depressive illness that had impaired his capacity to make reasoned and informed judgments about his future, such illness being a consequence of the defendant’s tort. It was not unfair to hold the defendant responsible for that dire consequence of its breach of duty. Nor were the damages attributable to Mr Corr’s death rendered too remote because his conduct had been unreasonable, and, as to the volenti argument, suicide was not something to which he had consented voluntarily and with his eyes open, but had been an act performed because of his psychological condition.