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He was sentenced to be detained in hospital pursuant to section 37 of the Mental Health Act 1983 with an indefinite restriction order under section 41.

His Lordship said that the stress disorder had diminished Mr Gray’s responsibility but had not extinguished it.

However, it was not sufficient to exclude liability for breaches of duty and damage that the immediate cause of the damage was the deliberate act of the claimant himself.

Although in general a defendant would not be liable for damage of which the immediate cause was the deliberate act of the claimant or a third party, that principle did not ordinarily apply when the claimant or third party’s act was itself a consequence of the defendant’s breach of duty.

So in Corr v IBC Vehicles Ltd (The Times February 28, 2008; [2008] AC 884) an employer whose negligence had caused post-traumatic stress disorder to a workman was held liable to his dependants for his subsequent death by suicide.

Although the immediate cause of the workman’s death was his own voluntary and deliberate act, the state of mind in which he had taken his own life had been caused by the employer’s breach of duty.

It followed from Corr that the mere fact that the killing was Mr Gray’s own voluntary and deliberate act was not in itself a reason for excluding the defendants’ liability. Nor did the defendants say that it was.

Their principal argument invoked a special rule of public policy. In its narrower and more specific form, it was that you could not recover for damage which was the consequence of a sentence imposed upon you for a criminal act.

In such a case it was the law which, as a matter of penal policy, had caused the damage and it would be inconsistent for the law to require that the person be compensated for that damage.

That rule was well established and the Court of Appeal had applied it to reject the claim for damage suffered in consequence of the criminal court’s sentence of detention.

However, the Court of Appeal had held that Mr Gray was entitled to compensation for loss of earnings after his arrest for the killing because his loss had not been inextricably linked with his illegal act. His Lordship disagreed.

The question was whether Mr Gray’s act of manslaughter had caused his inability to earn. The answer was that he had been arrested and sentenced to be detained because he had committed manslaughter. The causation was clear enough and it was hard to think of a more inextricable link.

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