In a recent judgment handed down on 21 May 2026, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) considered whether the Road Accident Fund (RAF) may be held liable for a dependant's loss of support claim where a deceased person, having suffered injuries in a motor vehicle accident, subsequently commits suicide. More specifically, the court was required to determine whether the suicide constituted an intervening act that broke the chain of legal causation.
In 2014, the deceased was involved in a motorcycle collision and sustained serious physical injuries, including a comminuted fracture of his right tibia, a pelvic fracture, soft-tissue injuries and a mild concussive injury. These resulted in significant physical impairment, including an inability to bend, crouch or stand for extended periods without pain, as well as an incapacity to lift heavy objects.
Before the collision, the deceased was a determined and resilient self-employed artisan. However, his plumbing business had already declined significantly approximately two years before the collision, severely constraining the family's financial circumstances. Following the collision, his physical disabilities further limited his ability to pursue alternative business opportunities. Approximately two and a half years after the accident, the deceased took his own life by means of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The first respondent, the deceased's widow, instituted a claim for loss of support against the RAF on behalf of herself and her minor daughters. The trial court dismissed the claim, finding that the absence of a diagnosed major depressive disorder following the motor vehicle accident was fatal to establishing a factual causation.
On appeal, the full court reversed this decision, holding that a formal diagnosis of mental illness was not a prerequisite for establishing factual causation. However, the full court did not proceed to consider legal causation.
The RAF was subsequently granted special leave to appeal to the SCA. The central issue before the court was the causal connection between the admitted wrongful and negligent conduct that caused injury to the deceased and the deceased's subsequent conduct resulting in his own death.
The SCA reaffirmed that causation involves two distinct enquiries: factual causation, which asks whether the harm would have occurred but for the wrongful conduct; and legal causation, which asks whether there is a sufficiently close relationship between the wrongful conduct and the resulting harm to justify the imposition of liability, having regard to considerations such as foreseeability, proximity and intervening causes.
The court emphasised that the test for legal causation is flexible and encompasses factors including reasonable foreseeability, directness, the presence of a
novus actus interveniens, legal policy and fairness. Referring to
OK Bazaars (1929) Ltd v Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd, the SCA reiterated that an intervening cause that is neither unusual nor unexpected, and which is reasonably foreseeable, will not necessarily relieve the original wrongdoer of liability.
Applying the but-for test, the SCA acknowledged that the deceased's financial circumstances had already been severely constrained before the collision. Nevertheless, the court found factual causation to be established. The evidence regarding the deceased's resilience and determination suggested that, absent the compounding effect of his injuries and resulting distress, it was improbable that he would have taken his own life.
The court accepted that debilitating physical injuries may give rise to psychological sequelae and that the deceased had displayed emotional responses indicative of psychological distress, even if those symptoms were insufficient to support a formal diagnosis of mental illness. In this regard, the trial court had erred in treating the absence of a diagnosed psychological condition as determinative.
Turning to legal causation, the SCA distinguished its earlier decision in
Road Accident Fund v Russell, where the deceased's brain injury had directly caused severe depression that impaired his mental functioning. In that matter, the suicide was held not to constitute a
novus actus interveniens.
In the present case, however, no such direct impairment existed. The SCA emphasised that suicide is generally a deliberate act of volition and self-determination and is not presumed to result from a defect of will. However, where a person is deprived of full autonomy because of a mental illness caused by the wrongful conduct, or where the suicide is reasonably foreseeable or sufficiently closely connected to the wrongful conduct, legal liability may nevertheless arise.
The SCA found that the deceased had not suffered from a cognisable psychological injury or condition that impaired his mental capacity or judgment. He remained capable of exercising free will and his mental distress, anger, frustration and expressions of despair did not justify a finding that he lacked the ability to exercise independent judgment. His decision to take his own life therefore constituted a new intervening cause.
The court then considered whether the suicide was nevertheless reasonably foreseeable or sufficiently closely connected to the wrongful conduct to establish legal causation. It concluded that it was not.
First, the passage of approximately two and a half years between the collision and the suicide weakened the casual connection and militated against a finding of foreseeability. Secondly, in the absence of a recognised psychological injury or mental illness, the likelihood of suicide was substantially reduced and the resulting harm was not of a kind that could reasonably have been anticipated. Thirdly, the deceased was a resilient individual with no history of mental illness and his conduct came as an unexpected shock to those around him.
While the SCA acknowledged the English authority of
Corr v IBC Vehicles Ltd, in which the House of Lords held that a wrongdoer need not foresee the precise form of damage suffered, it noted that the deceased in
Corr had developed severe depression following the accident. Those facts were materially different from those before the court.
The SCA accordingly held that legal causation had not been established. The appeal was upheld with costs.
Read full judgment here:
Road Accident Fund v L.M and Others (174/2024) [2026] ZASCA 73 (21 May 2026)
