After reading with interest David Locke's article in relation to nervous shock (see [2004] Gazette, 25 March, 39), I would suggest that the judiciary could have justified the decision in Salter v UB Frozen and Chilled Foods Ltd [2003] S.L.T 1011 on the basis that Mr Salter was by definition a 'primary victim' within the test suggested in Page v Smith [1996].

To satisfy the primary victim test, a claimant must have been well within the range of foreseeable 'physical injury'.

I suggest that the solution to the problem caused by cases such as Salter and Dooley v Cammell Laird & Co Limited [1951] Lloyds Rep 271 is to recognise that psychiatric injury is as much a 'physical injury' as a broken leg.

The distinction between physical and psychiatric injury was developed because of a fear of a multitude of claims for psychiatric injury that could neither be proved or disproved.

Developments in the diagnosis of genuine psychiatric injury is now an advanced science.

The distinction between primary and secondary victims would still remain to distinguish, for example, the claims of Mr Salter's colleagues who witnessed the accident but did not have any direct involvement in the third party's death.

However, Mr Salter was directly involved and therefore clearly within the range of physical injury if this definition is extended to cover psychiatric harm.

Instead of calling off the search for principle, perhaps the principles that are already established just need to be reviewed.

Phil Crawley, Richmonds Solicitors, Doncaster