Primary briefing · Judgment
high impact Supreme Court of Appeal · 21 May 2026
Road Accident Fund v L.M and Others
The deceased was injured in a motor vehicle collision and later committed suicide. His dependants claimed loss of support from the RAF, arguing the injuries caused the suicide. The high court full bench found in the dependants' favour. The RAF appealed to the SCA.
The court held: The SCA upheld the RAF's appeal. Factual (but-for) causation was established: the injuries were a contributing cause of the suicide. However, legal causation failed. The deceased retained full autonomy and volition, suffered no cognizable mental illness or psychological lesion impairing his judgment, and his suicide was not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the wrongful conduct. The suicide was therefore a novus actus interveniens. The full court's order was set aside and the dependants' claim dismissed with costs.
Legal impact: The judgment develops the law on legal causation in suicide-after-accident cases, distinguishing Road Accident Fund v Russell. It establishes that where a deceased did not suffer a diagnosed mental illness or impairment of volition attributable to the wrongful conduct, suicide breaks the chain of legal causation regardless of whether but-for causation is proved. It also sets important evidentiary guardrails: courts will reject deductive reasoning that infers mental impairment solely from the fact of suicide. Foreseeability of suicide now turns squarely on the presence or absence of a diagnosed psychological condition. This recalibrates how dependants' loss-of-support claims involving suicide must be pleaded, evidenced, and valued.
Who is affected
RAF litigators and appointed attorneysPersonal injury and delictual practitionersMotor vehicle liability insurersDependants and families of accident victims pursuing loss-of-support claimsClinical and industrial psychologists providing medico-legal evidence on causation What this means for practitioners
Review all pending dependants' loss-of-support claims involving post-accident suicide to assess whether there is a diagnosed mental illness or psychological lesion impairing volition — without one, legal causation is unlikely to be established.
Ensure expert psychological evidence in suicide-causation cases addresses a specific diagnosed condition rather than reasoning backwards from the fact of suicide to infer impairment.
Update case-valuation models and settlement strategies for RAF and insurer clients to reflect the higher evidentiary threshold for legal causation in suicide cases.
Advise claimant-side clients that factual causation alone is insufficient and that expert evidence of a cognizable mental illness attributable to the accident injuries is now essential.