I can’t imagine being confronted with the body of someone who has jumped to their death: limbs splayed in ways that shouldn’t be possible, clothes shredded by velocity meeting tarmac, the bloodied remains of a face. The idea is appalling. So I have every sympathy for the police officers who saw just that at the Grenfell Tower fire and are currently seeking damages in the High Court. But while they have my sympathy, I happen to think that their case is bad news for the rest of us.

We seem to be entering a more litigious era, one in which tragedy becomes industry

Thirty-three officers are suing 12 different parties, including the Met police commissioner and Kensington and Chelsea council, for ‘psychiatric injuries’. Over a hundred firefighters have already received a total of £20 million in a similar legal action. Their argument is essentially that the fire should never have happened and that dealing with its consequences was so traumatic that they have been left struggling to work. Well, no one would disagree that the fire was an appalling tragedy, one that seems avoidable. Most will agree too that being confronted with that degree of human suffering will have had profound effects on those involved.

No, the thing I can’t work out is why the emergency services’ exposure to distress is considered a legal wrong. Isn’t this precisely the point of the police and firefighters, to place themselves in often appalling situations for the good of others? When your job is to save lives, the risk is you’ll witness death. Car crashes, murders, stabbings, explosions, suicides – these are the horrors of modern human existence and they are horrors that police surely accept when they sign up to the job.

The causes of such things – be they accident, negligence or malice – will have very little bearing on the suffering that they create. Yet the outcome of civil cases hinges on such questions. The firefighters’ union that settled last month went after the management company and the manufacturers of Grenfell’s cladding, arguing that they were guilty of negligence. But who would they sue if a freak gust of wind tipped a perfectly road-legal lorry into a young family? Clearing up such a mess would no doubt cause severe psychological harm.

The response from those in favour of such civil cases is that the difference lies in whether the harm could have been reasonably avoided. Yet plenty of things the police witness are avoidable. Does that mean they’re entitled to a cash settlement? Are the absent fathers of gangland killers to have their savings accounts emptied by police who witness the aftermath of their child’s machete rampage?

You can accept this argument while still believing that serious wrongs were committed at Grenfell. It seems obvious that there were failures at the council, the management company, those involved in the tower’s refurb and even in the fire service’s command team in giving that infamous ‘stay put’ order to residents. Instead, what I’m arguing is that civil litigation – in pursuit of hefty financial settlement – is not the way to address those wrongs.

Considerable amounts of public money, taxes paid by relatives of those who died, is being sought. It doesn’t seem right, especially when many of those relatives believe the Met and fire service failed them. Louise Taylor, a solicitor acting on behalf of the officers at the High Court, said: ‘My clients… sustained significant psychiatric injuries – some of which are life-changing and permanent – due to their involvement with the Grenfell tragedy, in which they risked their lives.’ I have no doubt that this is true. It may well also be true that the law entitles them to financial damages because of their psychological suffering (although we may never see a ruling, the case is currently on pause as the parties attempt to settle out of court). If it is lawful, so much the worse for the law.

Such cases make it difficult for those who run emergency services to ask employees to do their jobs. Ambulance staff were held back during the first London Bridge terror attack for fear that they too might be attacked by the terrorists. Police and members of the public were left to administer first aid while paramedics waited beyond the cordon. The subsequent inquest found that at least one victim could have been saved if that order hadn’t been given. Surely it would have been better to offer paramedics a choice and ask if they would be willing to undergo such risks – protected, of course, by armed police – in order to save the lives of others. I imagine many would. I would also hazard a guess, but have no way of knowing, that fear of legal retribution affected the decision to hold back paramedics.

Incidentally, an off-duty Australian nurse, Kirsty Boden, was having dinner with friends that night around London Bridge. When she heard of the attack, she told friends: ‘I’m a nurse, I have to go and help’. Kirsty was stabbed to death while trying to save the life of another – a testament to the bravery of first responders and a hero who really deserves her own memorial. Wouldn’t it have been better if specialist terror-trained paramedics, supported by police, had been there to help?

Instead, we seem to be entering a more litigious era, one in which tragedy becomes industry for lawyers and unions. We should resist this. It is for the criminal courts alone to adjudicate wrongdoing in such cases. The CPS is set to make a decision on whether it will prosecute those involved in Grenfell this summer, once the painfully slow inquiry concludes. In the meantime, individual police officers and firefighters should be helped with their obvious and understandable suffering. What they should not be allowed to do is redefined the strains of the job so that heroism becomes actionable harm.