Gray v Thames Trains Ltd and Another [2009] UKHL 33; [2009] 1 AC 1339
Negligence, illegality and claims for losses following a claimant’s own criminal act.
Facts
Kerrie Gray was injured in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash in October 1999. Thames Trains and Railtrack, later Network Rail Infrastructure, admitted liability for the crash. Although his physical injuries were minor, he developed post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, which affected his work and behaviour.
In August 2001, Gray became involved in an altercation with a pedestrian, Mr Boultwood. After the confrontation had ended, Gray obtained a knife, pursued him and fatally stabbed him. Gray pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility. He was detained first in custody and then in hospital, with a hospital order under section 37 of the Mental Health Act 1983 and an indefinite restriction order under section 41.
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Gray sued the railway defendants. Alongside his claims arising from the crash injuries, he sought earnings lost during his detention, damages for the consequences of his conviction and detention, damages for guilt and remorse, and an indemnity against possible claims by Mr Boultwood’s dependants.
Issue
Could Gray recover losses arising from the killing and his detention when the defendants’ negligence had caused the psychiatric disorder that led to the killing?
The trial judge rejected those disputed claims on public-policy grounds. The Court of Appeal maintained the rejection of general damages but allowed Gray’s appeal concerning lost earnings, leaving causation for further consideration. The defendants appealed to the House of Lords, and Gray cross-appealed against the rejection of his other claims.
Decision and reasoning
The House of Lords unanimously allowed the defendants’ appeal and restored the trial judge’s order. Gray’s cross-appeal failed. The disputed claims were barred, but the defendants’ admitted liability for the original crash injuries was not erased.
A causal connection did not resolve the public-policy question
The House accepted that, but for the crash and resulting disorder, Gray would not have killed Mr Boultwood. The decision did not rest on denying that connection. Nor was the fact that Gray acted deliberately, by itself, enough to settle the negligence claim.
The crucial additional feature was his criminal responsibility. Diminished responsibility reduced his culpability but did not extinguish it. The civil court had to respect the criminal court’s treatment of him as responsible for manslaughter and the resulting detention.
The narrower rule: consequences of the criminal court’s disposal
Lord Hoffmann distinguished a narrower and a wider public-policy rule. The narrower rule prevented recovery for losses resulting from the sentence or other criminal disposal imposed for the claimant’s offence. Its central justification was consistency: the legal system could not impose detention because of a person’s criminal responsibility and then require another person to compensate him for its consequences.
Gray’s detention and associated loss of earnings fell within that reasoning. He could not avoid it by arguing that the psychiatric injury would have reduced his earnings even if he had never committed the offence. The court could not disregard what had actually happened: his own offence had led to detention that prevented him from working.
Lord Rodger and Lord Brown emphasised that allowing this alternative claim would provide indirect compensation for the same consequences. The fact that Gray was detained in hospital rather than serving an ordinary prison sentence did not change the result on these facts.
The wider rule: other consequences of the killing
The claims for guilt and remorse, and for an indemnity against claims by the deceased’s dependants, were consequences of the killing rather than of the criminal court’s order. They therefore required the wider rule against compensation for loss caused by the claimant’s own criminal conduct.
These losses followed directly from Gray’s killing of Mr Boultwood. The House rejected them as well. This explains why the distinction was not simply between general and special damages: the court considered the source of each loss and the policy applicable to it.
Limits of the decision
The decision concerned the particular losses following Gray’s offence. It did not deprive him of his lawful claim for the crash injuries or the earnings lost before the killing.
Lord Phillips and Lord Rodger reserved their positions on materially different hospital-order cases, such as where a minor offence merely revealed a mental disorder requiring treatment and the offending played no relevant part in the detention decision. Those possibilities were not decided in Gray’s case. The judgment therefore should not be presented as a finding that every hospital order necessarily amounts to punishment, or that any criminal conduct defeats every part of a negligence claim.
