In 1970, when commenting on the law's progress in dealing with negligently inflicted psychiatric damage that does not result from physical injury (hereinafter ‘psychiatric damage’), Windeyer J delivered a famous ‘backhanded’ compliment, by observing ‘[l]aw, marching with medicine but in the rear and limping a little’. At the risk of straining that metaphor by re-casting it into a medical perspective, the purpose of this article is to provide a diagnosis and prognosis as to the current state of that legal limp. It would conclude: ‘legal patient now seems docile and uncharacteristically compliant, makes right noises but limp no better. Query whether symptomatic of more serious problem requiring radical surgery?’
This rather negative assessment is acknowledged to be somewhat at odds with a more optimistic prognosis that could be derived from recent trends that seem generally to signify a growing ditente between law and medicine.