Kenneth Warner highlights the courts’ reluctance to invoke a duty of care for unconventional forms of damage
In the modern era, with the dramatic extension of paternalistic functions delegated to local authorities, we have seen a commensurate exposure of these bodies to liability under the principles of negligence law. Where the damage in issue comprises the standard sort of direct physical injury, the situation is a straightforward one, and the standard negligence enquiry ensues.
More recently however, other types of damage, which may yet be regarded as personal injury, have presented a much more complex circumstance. Litigation has been pursued against public authorities in relation to a range of other types of harm, including psychiatric illness (D v E Berkshire NHS Trust [2005] 2 AC 373, [2005] 2 WLR 993); physical and emotional neglect and suffering (X v Bedfordshire CC); enforced separation of young child from mother (M v Newham BC); failure to diagnose dyslexia in a young child (E v Dorset DC); failure to provide a child
