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At around 2:50 pm on Thursday in May 2014, Amy Mallet attempted suicide by driving her car into a power pole at a suburban intersection in Heathmont, Melbourne.
Forty minutes later, her colleague Stelliani Tsiragakis arrived at the scene with her supervisor, seeing only the wrecked vehicle and the damaged pole.
One of the police officers assessing the scene remarked to them that the collision “appeared intentional”.
Shocked, Tsiragakis soon developed a psychiatric condition that she said was triggered or aggravated by what she had witnessed and heard.
She sued both her employer and Mallet’s insurer for negligence, claiming she had suffered psychiatric injury as a result of attending what she described as the “aftermath” of her colleague’s suicide attempt.
A separate trial of the preliminary issue of whether Mallet owed a duty of care to avoid using her vehicle to inflict self-harm in a way that might cause psychiatric harm to co-workers who could witness the aftermath proceeded on a short list of agreed facts with no witnesses, no cross-examination and no new evidence.
Tsiragakis contended the duty was owed because Mallet knew she was vulnerable and in particular of her history of anxiety and her mother’s prior suicide attempt. She relied only on being in a “co-worker” relationship rather than having any additional personal or social connection.
Judge Julie Clayton found in Victoria’s county court that there was no such duty of care owed because there was an insufficient connection between the claimant and the event.
Tsiragakis appealed.
Foreseeability of psychiatric harm alone was sufficient to create a duty — she argued – if such harm was not “far-fetched or fanciful”.
She contended first that, she was a “bystander” who suffered psychiatric harm from witnessing an accident. Second, that her proximity to the scene made it reasonably foreseeable she could be affected. Third, that the pre-existing relationship of co-workers created a special duty of care.
The insurer challenged that argument as being misconceived. Although reasonable foreseeability was an essential feature the claimant’s situation lacked sufficient proximity—whether through physical closeness to a traumatic event, a close personal tie, or direct involvement such as that of rescuers or immediate victims –for the duty to be made out.
After all, Mallet’s attempt at self-harm did not involve Tsiragakis, who was neither present during the collision nor confronted with distressing sights such as injury or death.
She had only observed damage to property and was told by police, after the fact, that the crash was intentional.
The appeal judges accepted the insurer’s arguments. While the law has recognised duties in certain psychiatric injury cases—such as rescuers, close family members, or employees witnessing horrific incidents—it does not respond for those with only a “loose or incidental connection”.
Being a co-worker and friend was not a legally significant category in the context that the aftermath Tsiragakis witnessed was not objectively distressing.
Nor was it reasonably foreseeable that Mallet’s co-workers, or any employee, would attend the crash scene. Even Mallet’s awareness of Tsiragakis’s mental health history did not – so ruled the appeal court – alter the duty calculus.
Justice Jonathan Beach warned that to hold otherwise would “extend liability beyond the boundaries of reasonableness” and expose countless defendants to claims by anyone who later learns or sees something distressing.
Tsiragakis v Mallet [2025] VSCA 134 Beach, Kennedy and Kaye JJA, 17 June 2025
Categories: psychological injury , nervous shock , car accident