The plaintiff, Mr Page, was involved in a minor car accident, and was physically unhurt in the collision.

Mr Page had been directly involved in the accident, and therefore his case was of a different nature than those that had come previously before the House of Lords.

His Lordship held that this factual distinction also had legal consequences, those being that the restrictions that were put in place in order to limit the extent of the defendant's duty to secondary victims, did not apply to Mr Page's case.

In the case of direct victims, their Lordships said the following test should be applied: "Could the defendant reasonably foresee that his conduct would expose the plaintiff to the risk of personal injury, psychological or physical?"

The rule created in Page v Smith was later restricted (Rothwell v Chemical & Insulating Co)[3] to apply only to cases where the complainant suffers psychiatric illness as an immediate result of the incident - a mere endangerment resulting in worry which later turns into psychiatric illness does not suffice.