Date of Event:

Friday 13th November 2026

Time:

9.30 a.m. - 3,15 p.m.

Venue:

Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin

Registration:

To make a reservation, please complete the form here

You can also send an email to lawevent at tcd.ie.

Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University co-host a symposium discussing the interplay of clinical negligence and psychiatric injury – Friday 13th November 2026

Admission to the symposium is complimentary. This event is CPD certified, attending the symposium will give you approx. 4 hours CPD (to be confirmed). Solicitors who attend the symposium can CPD points in the domains of client care and professional standards.

Dr Andrea Mulligan (School of Law, Trinity College Dublin) and Prof Edward Dove (School of Law and Criminology, Maynooth University) are co-organising a symposium on clinical negligence and psychiatric injury co-hosted by Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University, taking place on Friday 13th November 2026 at the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin. 

In 2024, both the High Court of Ireland and the UK Supreme Court were asked to decide whether a family member of a loved one injured through clinical negligence should be allowed recover damages for psychiatric injury. The outcomes in these courts differed, and continue to differ in subsequent cases, raising complex ethico-legal and medical questions about the scope for recovery in this area.

This symposium will bring together leading legal academics from the UK, Ireland, Canada and Singapore to address these recent developments. The symposium should be of interest to academics, legal and medical practitioners, students, and stakeholders from healthcare and healthcare-related institutions. The symposium is planned to consist of two panels as well as a roundtable discussion in which all symposium participants will be welcome to contribute their views.

This event is co-funded by the TCD Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Events Fund and the Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology Research Incentivisation Fund.

 

Programme

9:30 - 10:00am

Coffee/tea and registration

10:00 - 10:30am

Welcome and introduction : Overview of Law in England and Wales, and Ireland

Andrea Mulligan and Ted Dove

10:30am -12:00pm

Panel 1: Comparative Common Law Perspectives

Chair: Andrea Mulligan

How do different common law jurisdictions approach psychiatric harm and duty of care in medical negligence in light of recent case law?

  • Prof Barbara von Tigerstrom
  • Prof Kumaralingam Amirthalingam
  •  Prof Rachael Mulheron KC

Q&A to follow

12:00pm -12:15pm

Coffee/tea break

12:15pm -1:15pm

Panel 2: Understanding psychiatric injury: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

Chair: Ted Dove

What is the historical context in this area? How does Civil Law/Scots Law look at this differently?

  • Prof Imogen Goold
  • Dr Jonathan Brown

Q&A to follow

 

1:15pm - 2pm

Lunch

2pm - 3pm

Roundtable discussion: making sense of psychiatric injury and medical negligence

Chairs: Andrea Mulligan and Ted Dove

How can we ascertain psychiatric injury versus normal emotional distress? How, if at all, can clinicians and legal experts clearly differentiate between a “medical crisis” and a “medical accident”?

  • Prof Oliver Quick
  • Prof Mary Donnelly
  • Dr Barry Lyons
  • Prof Brendan Kelly

3pm - 3:15pm

Conclusions and next steps

*This agenda may be subject to change

Reservations:

To make a reservation, please complete the form under or here

You can also send an email to lawevent at tcd.ie.