Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
A version of this paper was presented to the Torts Subject Section at the Society of Legal Scholars conference at Keele University in September 2009. We are grateful for comments by participants in that session, and for comments by Stephen Todd and an anonymous reviewer.
I.
Introduction
THE three-to-two decision of the House of Lords in Page v. Smith 1 was one of a series of landmark decisions of the House that concerned the extent of negligence liability under the law of England and Wales2 for the causing of psychiatric harm. Page was controversial when it was decided and hard to analyse, and has caused a range of difficulties in subsequent litigation. There have been suggestions that it should be reconsidered by the Supreme Court. The purpose of the present article is to provide a contemporary evaluation of the decision in Page and to review it with an eye to its possible overruling or modification. In the first half of the article we critically examine the original litigation, and in the second half we consider the impact the decision has had in subsequent cases. Throughout the article we draw upon the significant corpus of judicial and academic criticism which has built up around the decision.
II.
The Facts of Page v. Smith
On 24 July 1987, the claimant in Page v. Smith, Ronald Edgar Page, was driving up a steep hill towards the school where he was a teacher. He was driving a Volvo estate car weighing about one-and-a-half tons. As he got to a junction he saw a car driven by the defendant, Simon Smith, coming towards him. It turned straight across the white line to his right and across his path. His car hit the front near-side corner of the other vehicle and stopped dead from about 30 miles an hour. Mr Page was not physically hurt, and got out and exchanged names and addresses with the defendant. He telephoned his wife and drove home. It was subsequently established that the car's chassis had been bent by being hit off centre. The car had only been worth £900 and was now damaged beyond economic repair. It was treated as a write-off. Within three hours of...