The recovery of damages for psychiatric injury is a complex area of personal injury law. The difficulties that arise relate to identifying the precise harm to be expressed in a way that enables a lawyer to reach a view on negligence and then arrive at a reasonable figure for compensation. This report studies the question to what extent negligently inflicted psychiatric injury qualifies for damages within the west European legal systems. A survey looks at the French, English, German and Dutch law, as these systems can be considered representative of some of the major western European law families: Roman law, Germanic law and the Common law.
