Case Title: Whetham v. Bismarck Hospital

Citation: 197 N.W.2d 678

Docket Number: 

State: north-dakota

Court: North Dakota Supreme Court

Date: 1972-05-01T00:00:00Z

Document:
197 N.W.2d 678 (1972) Martin WHETHAM and Dixie Whetham, Plaintiffs, and Dixie Whetham, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. BISMARCK HOSPITAL, a corporation, Defendant and Respondent. Civ. No. 8794. Supreme Court of North Dakota. May 1, 1972. *679 Conmy, Conmy, Rosenberg, Lucas & Olson, Bismarck, for plaintiff and appellant. Zuger, Bucklin & Zuger, Bismarck, for defendant and respondent. ERICKSTAD, Judge. Martin and Dixie Whetham, the parents of Tami Lynn, a child born to them in the Bismarck Hospital on the 28th day of July 1970, commenced an action to recover from the Bismarck Hospital a judgment of $100,000. They assert that shortly after Dixie's admission to the Bismarck Hospital, Tami Lynn was born, and that in the process of bringing Tami Lynn to Dixie's hospital bed an employee of the Hospital, in Dixie's presence, dropped her onto the tiled floor of the hospital room. They assert further that Tami Lynn struck her head upon the floor with great force and violence, fracturing her skull, and that this resulted from the careless and negligent handling of the child by the employee; that as a direct and proximate result of that negligence, Dixie was forced helplessly to watch her daughter fall to the floor and to hear the sound of the impact; that as a direct and proximate result of such negligence, Dixie suffered a severe emotional and mental shock, for which she now seeks recovery in money damages. The Whethams also ask for damages resulting from the additional medical expenses thereafter required to be expended for Tami's care and for the prolonged hospitalization of the mother while the child received this care. The trial court, on a motion for summary judgment, dismissed that part of the complaint which asked for damages arising out of the suffering caused Dixie from the emotional and mental shock of observing her daughter fall to the floor. Dixie has now appealed to this court from the judgment entered on the 16th day of August 1971 dismissing that part of the complaint. The complaint asserts that no claim is made on behalf of Tami Lynn for her injuries, for the reason that the full residual effects of her injuries are not yet known. Because the Hospital has moved for a dismissal of the appeal on the ground of delay in perfecting the appeal, we must first consider that motion before we reach the merits of the appeal. The Hospital cites in support of its motion Rules 7, 13, 21, 24, and 31 of Rules of Practice in Causes in the Supreme Court of North Dakota. It contends that notwithstanding that the case is now ready to be heard before our court, the briefs having been filed and the record settled, the case should be dismissed because Dixie failed, among other things, to file her brief within the time provided for in our Rules and failed to secure a settled statement of the case within that period. Had her brief been filed within the required period and the statement of the case settled within that time, this case could have been heard only one month earlier. We are inclined to deny the motion and settle the matter on the issues raised on the *680 merits, consistent with action we took as recently as January 12, 1972, when we by minute order denied a motion to dismiss an appeal in the case of Bolyea v. First Presbyterian Church, N.D., 196 N.W.2d 149. In the syllabus of a recently published opinion, we said: The procedural facts in this case are similar to the procedural facts in Hogan. Accordingly, we deny the motion for dismissal and proceed now to a determination of this appeal upon its merits. We must now decide whether Dixie, as the mother of Tami Lynn, may recover damages for emotional and mental shock suffered as a result of seeing Tami Lynn dropped from the arms of an employee of the Hospital onto the tiled floor of Dixie's hospital room. There are two leading cases in the State of California on whether liability may be predicated on fright or nervous shock (with consequent bodily injury) induced solely by the plaintiff's apprehension of negligently caused danger or injury to a third person. The first case is that of Amaya v. Home Ice, Fuel & Supply Co., 59 Cal. 2d 295, 29 Cal. Rptr. 33, 379 P.2d 513 (1963). In Amaya, Justice Schauer, speaking for the majority of the California Supreme Court, after reviewing the law of California and the other States of the United States, noting the development of the law as contained in the Restatement of Torts, the administrative difficulties and the socioeconomic and moral factors, concluded that under the circumstances recovery was not permitted. Justice Schauer pointed out that there must be a stopping point to the liability of a negligent defendant and, quoting Professor Prosser, said: He then explained why he thought it unthinkable that anyone should be liable to the end of time. It should be noted that Justice Peters wrote a dissent which was joined in by Justices Gibson and Peek. In 1968, only five years after Amaya, and after changes in the membership of the court, the California Supreme Court overruled Amaya in Dillon v. Legg, 68 Cal. 2d 728, 69 Cal. Rptr. 72, 441 P.2d 912. Justice Tobriner, speaking for the majority in Dillon, believing that the difficulties of adjudication should not frustrate the principle that there be a remedy for every substantial wrong and yet realizing that potential infinite liability should be limited, concluded that the law of torts holds a defendant amenable only for injuries to others which to the defendant at the time were reasonably foreseeable. In noting that the court was dealing with a case in which the plaintiff suffered a shock *682 which resulted in physical injury, and confining its opinion to that case, the court said: After laying down these guidelines, the court said that it would determine whether the accident and harm were reasonably foreseeable in light of the cited factors. Applying the aforementioned factors, Justice Tobriner concluded that the presence of all the factors indicated that the plaintiff had alleged a sufficient prima facie case. He quoted Dean Prosser as follows: Justice Burke, dissenting in Dillon, had this to say: The writer of an article in 29 A.L.R.3d, published in 1970, discussing the right of a bystander to recover damages in a negligence action for his fear that a third person will be injured or for his mental anguish at witnessing such injury, points out that there is a division among the courts, as illustrated by recent decisions from New York and California. Also pertinent is what the writer has to say about the treatment given this subject by Restatement of Torts 2d. Having considered the arguments expressed in the California decisions and the New York decision and noted the view most recently expressed in the Restatement of Torts 2d, we conclude that the trial court was correct in the instant case in dismissing that part of the complaint which sought to recover damages for the plaintiff's mental anguish at witnessing her daughter's injury negligently caused by an employee of the Hospital. It is our view that the plaintiff herein could recover only if the defendant's negligent act had threatened the plaintiff herself with harm or placed her within what is termed the zone of danger. The complaint contains no facts upon which such a contention could be supported. For the sake of future litigation, we think it important to note that we are today not adopting the "impact rule", which is to the effect that there can be no recovery for the consequences of fright and shock negligently inflicted in the absence of contemporaneous impact. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Niederman v. Brodsky, 436 Pa. 401, 261 A.2d 84 (1970), when considering whether it should abandon the impact rule, noted the trend of the appellate courts to abandon the rule. Having examined the arguments in support of the old impact rule and having concluded that continued adherence to the rule made little sense, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, two years after Dillon v. Legg, supra, adopted the zone-of-danger test. For the reasons stated in this opinion, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed. STRUTZ, C. J., and PAULSON, KNUDSON, and TEIGEN, JJ., concur.