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Headnote |
Summary of facts:
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Board was not wrong in deciding that there had been no crime of violence committed by those seeking to commit suicide by lying or throwing themselves in front of trains. There was no unreasonableness in that decision. The claims for compensation by four train drivers who suffered psychiatric illness as a result of witnessing such suicides accordingly failed.
Facts:
Four train drivers applied for compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 1979 (‘the 1979 Scheme’) for the psychiatric injuries they had suffered due to persons committing suicide on the railways by colliding with trains they were driving. In the case of three of the applicants, the person involved had either jumped, thrown himself or dived in front of the train whereas in the fourth case the person lay flat on the track with his neck on one rail and feet on the other. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Board (‘the Board’) did not accept that those committing suicide had used their own bodies as weapons and decided that throwing oneself at a train was not a crime of violence within the 1979 Scheme.
The four train drivers sought judicial review of the Board’s decision of 9 October 1991. They argued that the decision of the Board was fatally flawed because they had overlooked the proposition that the activities of a person who was trying to kill himself may still constitute a crime even if he succeeded in killing himself. They sought to distinguish the case of (R v Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, ex parte Webb(aka Warner) [1987] 1 QB 74) as having been solely concerned with a statutory offence in England and not a common law offence of causing injury by a reckless act, as existed in Scotland.
Held, dismissing the application:
(1) There was no distinction in principle between the statutory offence under s.34 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 considered in the case of R v Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, ex parte Webb(aka Warner) [1987] 1 QB 74) and the Scottish common law offence of causing injury by a reckless act. No distinction could therefore be made in relation to the facts in Webb as being concerned solely with a statutory offence. That being so, the facts were wholly analogous to the facts in Webb and there was no dispute that the Board had selected the proper test from Webb.
(2) As the Board had reached a similar conclusion on analogous facts to those in Webb, that no crime of violence had been committed by those seeking to commit suicide in this way, the Board could not be said to have reached a view that no reasonable tribunal could have done.
(3) The Court disapproved of the notion that simply because a suicide deliberately chooses a method of killing himself, the consequences of which would involve risk of injury to others, that action must be a crime of violence.
Parts of the scheme and other legislation referred to in the judgments
Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 1979, paragraph 2, 4, 6, 8, 15
Criminal Justice Act 1988, s. 109(3)(m)
Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 1990
British Transport Commission Act 1949
Offences against the Person Act 1861, s.34
Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1887 and 1975
Cases referred to in the judgment:
R v Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, ex parte Webb (aka Warner) [1987] 1 QB 74
R v Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, ex parte Clowes [1977] 1 WLR 1353
Brutus v Cozens (1972) AC 854
Petition West 1992 SLT 636
Gray v Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, 13 May 1992, unreported
McAllister v Abercrombie 1970 (5 Adam 366)
RHW v HM Advocate 1982 SCCR 152
R v Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, ex parte Parsons 19 November 1982 (CA), unreported.
R v Hancock 1986 AC 455
Dove 10/5 of Process
Burns 10/6 of Process
Suggested Editor’s note:
By contrast, the 1990, 1996 and 2001 Schemes all make specific provision for injuries attributable to an offence of trespass on a railway.
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