Note 56 — Chapter II · NEGLIGENT INTERFERENCE

“On principle, the distinction between cases of physical impact or lesion being necessary as a ground of liability for damage caused seems to have nothing in its favour—always on the footing that the causal connection between the injury and the occurrence is established. If compensation is to be recovered under the statute or at common law in respect of an occurrence which has caused dislocation of a limb, on what principle can it be denied if the same occurrence has caused unhinging of the mind? The personal injury in the latter case may be infinitely graver than in the former, and to what avail—in the incidence of justice, or the principle of law—is it to say that there is a distinction between things physical and mental? This is the broadest difference of all, and it carries with it no principle of legal distinction. Indeed it may be suggested that the proposition that injury so produced to the mind is unaccompanied by physical affection or change might itself be met by modern physiology or pathology with instant challenge.” Lord Shaw in Coyle v. Watson, [1915] A. C. 1, 14.