Mr Corr was a happily married man with two children who worked for the defendant, IBC Vehicles, as an engineer. In 1996 he suffered a near-death accident at work when a machine he was mending unexpectedly turned on, thrusting a sharp metal panel towards him, severing his ear. Mr Corr underwent prolonged and painful ear surgery. He suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression. Almost six years after the accident, Mr Corr took an overdose of pills and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for electro-convulsive therapy. This appeared to alleviate the symptoms but he then regressed and, in May 2002, he threw himself off a multi-storey car park and died.

The claimant, Mr Corr's widow, sued under the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934 for Mr Corr's damages and under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 for loss of dependency. The defendant admitted liability for the estate's claim but denied liability under the 1976 Act asserting that Mr Corr's suicide (while he was sane under the M'Naghten Rules) was not the same 'kind of harm' as depression, i.e. it fell outside the scope of the duty of care owed to him and/or was not an act which was reasonably foreseeable.

The defendant also argued that the suicide broke the chain of causation as novus actus interveniens, an unreasonable act, or by the principle volenti non fit injuria. Lastly, the defendant contended that the suicide amounted to contributory negligence. The defendant relied heavily on non personal injury negligence cases to support its argument on the scope of the duty of care and on cases in other branches of the law (notably criminal law) to support its argument that Mr Corr's M'Naghten sanity ought to preclude recovery of damages.

On behalf of the claimant, we argued that the suicide was a symptom of the severe depression and hence was the same kind of harm as physical and psychiatric personal injury (following, we said, Page v Smith [1996] and Hughes v Lord Advocate [1963]) and that the claimant only had to prove the normal employer's duty of care, breach, foreseeability of personal injury and causation. We also argued that the defendant's reliance on the concept of M'Naghten insanity as a control mechanism was:

- an anachronism from when suicide was a crime and courts did not want to shut out deserving claimants (e.g. in actions under the various Workmen's Compensation Acts); and

- showed an implicit acceptance by the defendant of the claimant's contention that suicide caused by an altered volition, itself caused by the defendant's breach, ought to sound in damages.

The House of Lords unanimously dismissed the defendant's appeal. In the leading speech, Lord Bingham
held that suicide arising from severe depression caused by the accident was not a different kind of harm from personal injury:

- while not insane in M'Naghten terms, Mr Corr was not fully responsible due to the defendant's breach. Therefore his conduct in taking his own life could not be said to fall outside the scope of the duty that the defendant owed him; and

- it was foreseeable that some post-accident sufferers of severe depression would commit suicide. A tortfeasor who reasonably foresaw the occurrence of some damage need not foresee the precise form which the damage might take, applying Hughes v Lord Advocate.

The defences of novus actus and volenti, unreasonable act and contributory negligence did not help the defendant on the evidence, but might in other cases. It was not necessary to show that Mr Corr was insane in M'Naghten terms. Mr Corr's suicide was not a voluntary, informed decision taken by him as an adult of sound mind making and giving effect to a personal decision about his future. It was the response of a man suffering from a severely depressive illness which impaired his capacity to make reasoned and informed judgments about his future. As the illness was a consequence of the defendant's tort it was not unfair to hold it responsible for that consequence of its breach of duty.

In a partially dissenting judgment Lord Scott held that Mr Corr contributed by his own fault and assessed that at 20%.

The clear implication of this case is that defendants will not be able to escape liability for the financial consequences of the death of an employee who commits suicide post-accident where the medical evidence supports causation.

However, there is clearly scope for contributory negligence. Practitioners in this area should consider carefully the words of Lord Neuberger at paragraph 69 when addressing the medical evidence: "In the end, I consider that the question to be addressed is the extent to which the deceased's personal autonomy has been overborne by the impairment to his mind attributable to the defendant. Where it has not been so overborne at all, the contribution, and hence the reduction in damages, may well be 50% (as in Reeves); where it has been effectively wholly overborne, there will be no reduction. In other cases, the answer will lie somewhere between those two extremes. In such cases, the question, while a relatively easy question to formulate, will, I strongly suspect, be a relatively difficult question to answer, at least in many circumstances."

Andrew Ritchie and Robert McAllister were led by John Foy QC (all of 9 Gough Square) in this successful resistance of the defendant's appeal.