Thresholds of Actionable Mental Harm in Negligence:A Policy-Based Appraisal
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Common law courts, In Canada and elsewhere, currently Insist on proof of a recognizable psychiatric illness (RPI) before granting damages to plaintiffs seeking compensation for stand-alone mental harm caused by negligent acts. This article argues that the time has come to revisit this well-entrenched principle. The inquiry focuses specifically on the policy concerns underlying the current rule. As a first step, policy considerations for and against limiting the extent of actionable mental harm are canvassed and assessed. The author concludes that some of the perceived advantages of the RPI rule, in particular predictability, are debatable and that insistence on the traditional formula raises issues of access and fairness. As a second step, the option of eliminating all thresholds is examined and rejected in favour of a no compensation for threshold. The author suggests that this threshold will allow courts to strike the correct balance between deterring legal actions based on mere of life and recognizing the legitimacy of mid-spectrum mental harm, whether psychiatric, psychological, or emotional in nature.A ce jour, au Canada et ailleurs, les tribunaux de common law insistent sur la preuve d'un prejudice psychiatrique reconnu (PPR) lorsqu'il s'agit d'indemniser les demandeurs ayant subi un prejudice purement moral cause par la negligence d'autrui. Cet article suggere qu'il est temps de revoir ce principe bien etabli. La demarche est centree sur les considerations de politique generale qui soustendent l'etat actuel du droit. En premier lieu, l'auteure examine les questions de politique pour et contre la necessite de limiter l'etendue du prejudice moral indemnisable. Elle conclut que les avantages associes a la regle PPR ne sont pas probants et que le fait d'insister sur un tel palier souleve des questions d'acces et d'equite. En deuxieme lieu, l'auteure se penche sur la possibilite d'eliminer tous les paliers, mais cette option est rejetee en faveur d'un palier fonde sur la notion de « non-indemnisation pour simple contrariete ». Selon Tauteure, cette solution permettra aux tribunaux de prevenir les actions juridiques fondees sur les « simples desagrements de la vie » tout en reconnaissant la legitimite du prejudice moral sous toutes ses formes, qu'il soit psychiatrique, psychologique ou emotionnel.Louise Belanger-Hardy*IntroductionI. Mustapha and the nature of actionable mental harmII. Policy considerations and the RPI threshold1. Behavioural and attitudinal issues2. Pragmatic concerns, scope of liability, and reliance on diagnostic classifications3. Fear of proliferation of claims and the burden for judicial administration4. Wider social issuesIII. Redefining negligence law's approach to the nature of actionable mental harm1 Unlimited actionable mental harm2 Exploring limitations on actionable mental harma. Discarding the RPI higher thresholdb. Whither the serious and prolonged formula?c. Exploring other limiting formulas3 The no compensation for upsets lower threshold: a limit endorsed in Mustapha ConclusionIntroductionTort law has always viewed mental harm with caution, not to say scepticism. This devaluation of injury to the mind can be attributed to a number of intertwining causes including limited scientific and medical knowledge about the functioning of the psyche,1 conceptions of the mind/ body relationship inspired by Cartesian dualism,2 prevalent assumptions about women and emotion-based injuries,3 and fear and incomprehension of mental illnesses.4Although redress for some forms of mental harm5 is possible through torts, such as assault and defamation,6 courts have been more guarded when the harm flows from negligent conduct. This is particularly true for so-called independent or stand-alone mental harm, not ancillary to physical injury.7Actions for indemnification for negligently inflicted mental harm started to appear more frequently by the middle of the 19th century with the advent of passenger train travel. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".