03/07/99 - Mother loses her damages claim for girl's murder
Terence Shaw, Legal Correspondent
The Daily Telegraph

A MOTHER whose daughter was abducted, murdered and mutilated by a man with known psychiatric problems lost her legal battle for compensation yesterday against the health authority responsible for his care.

Beverley Palmer, whose daughter, Rosie, four, was murdered in 1994 by Shaun Armstrong, 37, claimed pounds 200,000 from Tees Health Authority and Hartlepool and East Durham NHS Trust for her loss and the psychiatric illness she suffered as a result of the murder.

Three Court of Appeal judges yesterday upheld an earlier court ruling that her claim must be struck out as disclosing no cause of action because the health authority did not owe duty of care to her or her daughter. Armstrong, who was jailed for life for murder, was known to have psychiatric problems and had threatened to kill children.

He had been released from Hartlepool General Hospital and re-housed near Rosie's family in Hartlepool in 1993. In her action in respect of her daughter, Mrs Palmer, 40, had sought damages for bereavement, funeral expenses, her post-traumatic stress disorder and pathological grief reaction, which her lawyers said had been catastrophic.

She was no longer able to work as a nurse, had attempted suicide, lost the care and control of her remaining child and was at one time sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Mrs Palmer claimed that the health authority and the trust failed to diagnose that there was a substantial and foreseeable risk of Armstrong committing serious sexual offences, failed to offer treatment and failed to prevent his release from hospital while he was a risk.