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Can an at-fault driver be responsible for nervous shock sustained as a result of being told that a family member has been involved in a minor traffic accident?
That question came before the Supreme Court of Queensland as a consequence of a collision on the Gateway Motorway in August 2016 at the Eight Mile Plains exit. K
it Tang Fu, executed a sudden, dangerous manoeuvre, veering back into the motorway in front of Jason Jeanes’ Ford Explorer that Jason was unable to bring to a stop before it rear-ended Fu’s vehicle.
The accident appeared to be minor: both cars sustained only light damage, remained drivable and although Jason and his two daughters were shaken, no one appeared to be physically injured.
Jason’s partner Karen Lundbergs was at work when her daughter Susie called to inform her of the accident. Although reassured that everyone was physically unharmed, Lundbergs experienced acute distress, particularly as events evolved.
An ambulance officer later informed her that her youngest daughter Josie, suffering from a panic attack, was being transported to the hospital as a precaution. Lundbergs rushed to the hospital, where she found her daughters safe and well.
Despite this, Lundbergs claimed she subsequently developed a serious psychiatric condition. She described panic attacks, heart palpitations, nightmares, severe anxiety, and an inability to function in her daily life and work. Eventually, she launched an injury compensation claim against Fu and his CTP insurer, Suncorp, for damages for psychiatric injury.
The core of the case was whether Fu owed Lundbergs any duty in these circumstances or whether any injury to her was reasonably unforeseeable by merely being informed about the accident.
It was undisputed that Fu was at at fault for the crash.
When the matter came before him, Justice Lincoln Crowley observed that recovery for nervous shock damages was traditionally reserved for where someone directly witnesses a catastrophe or is otherwise so closely connected by way of a family relationship to the victim that when told of it they might reasonably be expected to sustain a psychological injury.
Here Lundbergs had not witnessed the accident but was told about it at the same time that she was told her family members were unharmed, except for Josie’s transient panic attack.
The court noted that psychiatric injury claims require not only a recognised psychiatric illness but also that the defendant’s conduct created a foreseeable risk of such harm to the claimant.
Adding complexity was Lundbergs’ history. The court heard extensive evidence that her family had faced numerous prior and subsequent stressors: her partner’s recent quad bike accident, his ongoing mental health issues, financial struggles, the children’s pre-existing anxiety and school difficulties, and even break-ins at her business premises.
Justice Crowley reasoned that the was required to consider the particular circumstances of the accident to determine whether the at-fault driver owed the plaintiff a duty of care of the kind contended for.
“It surely cannot be reasonable to impose a duty of care upon a defendant regardless of how the plaintiff’s psychiatric injury arises as a result of ‘an incident’, without any context or content,” he observed.
He ruled that while Fu owed a duty of care to other road users in particular to Jeanes and the children, that duty could not in the circumstances of a minor traffic accident, extend to Lundbergs by reason of her learning of it remotely from the scene.
“That the plaintiff might suffer such an injury as a result of a collision of that kind was not reasonably foreseeable,” he wrote in his 87 page judgment. “Such a prospect would be far-fetched or fanciful”.
He also reasoned that these unrelated factors more likely explained the psychiatric deterioration she suffered, rather than the brief phone call about the minor crash.
The judge dismissed the claim, ruling that Fu find that the first defendant did not owe a duty of care to Lundbergs and that even if he did, she had failed to establish that her psychiatric condition was an injury caused by the collision.
Lundbergs v Fu & Anor [2025] QSC 135 Crowley J, 6 June 2025
Categories: Road & footpath injuries , nervous shock