A woman who claimed she was psychologically scarred by bullying at school has taken her damages battle to the Court of Appeal.

In one of the first cases of its kind, Leah Bradford-Smart, now 20, sued West Sussex County Council, claiming it failed to protect her from constant bullying by fellow pupils at Crawley's Ifield Middle School between 1990 and 1993.

But in November last year, High Court judge Mr Justice Garland rejected her claim, saying it could not be held responsible for the bullying Leah suffered outside the school gates.

The judge accepted Leah had been seriously affected by her ordeal and bullying was more than a trivial cause of the psychiatric symptoms she had suffered since.

But he said blame could not be laid on the school, where her form teacher had taken reasonable steps to safeguard Leah from her tormentors.

The judge said: "If Leah suffered psychiatric illness caused by bullying, then the causative bullying was at home and on the bus going to and from school, not in the school itself.

"A school cannot be responsible for what takes place outside the gates, whether at a public bus stop, on the bus, in the town or on the estate."

Today Roger Ter Haar QC, representing Miss Bradford-Smart, told Lords Justices Henry, Judge and Hale: "It was wrong in principle to adopt a line of demarcation at the school gate.

"Whether the injury will be suffered in or out of school matters not to the imposition of the duty."

He asked if it could be right that the school did nothing if abusive behaviour outside school was affecting a child inside school, and the teachers knew that this was the case.

West Sussex County Council, which opposed the claim, says there was little sign that Miss Bradford-Smart was being bullied while at school.