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Neutral Citation Number:
Reported Number:	R(AF)2/08
File Number:	CAF 3748 2006
Appellant:
Respondent:
Judge/Commissioner:	Judge E. A. L. Bano
Date Of Decision:	13/11/2007
Date Added:	19/11/2007
Main Category:	War pensions and armed forces compensation
Main Subcategory:	War pensions - entitlement
Secondary Category:
Secondary Subcategory:
Notes:	War disablement pension - attributability to service - psychiatric injury accepted - whether disablement due to self-inflicted physical injury attributable to service Following an accident during service in the Royal Air Force, the claimant had been involved in incidents of self-harm and had needed psychiatric care. The Secretary of State awarded war disablement pension, having accepted depressive illness and post-traumatic stress disorder as attributable to service. The claimant made a claim in respect of two further conditions, resulting from self-inflicted injuries to his right little finger and to his toe, which he claimed resulted from the psychiatric condition attributable to service. The injury to his toe was accepted as attributable to service, but the claim in respect of “Laceration of the Right Hand with Tendon Damage” was rejected. The claimant appealed. The tribunal dismissed his appeal, finding the accounts of the injury to the finger inconsistent and unsupported by medical evidence and any connection to service too remote. The claimant appealed to the Commissioner. Held, allowing the appeal, that: 1. where service conditions have played a part in producing “the complex of circumstances” leading to a self-inflicted but non-fatal injury, the resulting disablement is attributable to service, applying the test set out in Freeman v Minister of Pensions and National Insurance [1966] 1 WLR 456 relating to fatal self-injury (paragraphs 7 and 8); 2. the claimant’s account of the incident causing the injury to his finger was not inherently unlikely or implausible and was enough to raise a reasonable doubt in the appellant’s favour and therefore, applying the test in R v Department of Social Security ex parte Edwards (CO/2281/1990), that evidence was “reliable” (paragraphs 9 and 10); 3. in holding that the appellant’s claim lay outside the scope of the war pensions scheme the tribunal’s decision was erroneous in point of law and the condition “Laceration of the Right Hand with Tendon damage was attributable to service (paragraphs 1 and 8).
Decision(s) to Download:	R(AF) 2_08ws.doc