Case Name: Sonya R. CLOMON v. MONROE CITY SCHOOL BOARD
Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1990-12-03
Citations: 572 So. 2d 571
Docket Number: No. 90-C-0915
Parties: Sonya R. CLOMON v. MONROE CITY SCHOOL BOARD.
Judges: WATSON, J., concurs and assigns reasons.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 572
Pages: 571–588

Head Matter:
Sonya R. CLOMON v. MONROE CITY SCHOOL BOARD.
No. 90-C-0915.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Dec. 3, 1990.
Dissenting Opinion by Justice Cole Dec. 14, 1990.
Additional Reasons in Support of Majority Opinion Jan. 4, 1991.
Additional Reasons in Dissent Jan. 11, 1991.
Rehearing Denied Jan. 30, 1991.
Thomas G. Zentner, Jr., Theus, Grisham, Davis & Leigh, Monroe, for Monroe City School Bd. defendant-applicant.
Milton Dale Peacock, Monroe, for Sonya R. Clomon plaintiff-respondent.

Opinion:
DENNIS, Justice.
This is a suit by a young woman against a school board for damages because of the severe emotional distress she sustained, without contemporaneous physical injury, when her automobile struck and killed a four year old school boy who darted into her path after the school board's bus driver and bus attendant discharged the boy from the bus, prematurely deactivated the bus warning devices and drove away, leaving the boy alone to cross the street to his home. The trial court held the school board liable for the emotional distress and subsequent physical and mental illnesses its employees negligently inflicted on the young woman but reduced her recovery by 30% because of her negligent failure to see the boy before he ran into the street. The court of appeal affirmed, Clomon v. Monroe City School Board, 557 So.2d 1100 (La.App. 2d Cir.1990), and this court granted certiorari to determine whether the decisions below were consistent with the bystander recovery rule announced in Lejeune v. Rayne Branch Hospital, 556 So.2d 559 (La.1990).
The deceased, Antonio Benjamin, was a four year old handicapped special education student who lived on Powell. Avenue in Monroe. During the 1983 fall school term the Monroe City School Board provided him with school transportation in a mini-bus designated for handicapped children. Each school day Antonio was transported to and from his house under the care and supervision of the school bus operator and a special education attendant.
We see no error in the trial court's findings of fact based on conflicting testimony of witnesses to the accident: On the afternoon of the accident, the bus driver halted the bus opposite Antonio's house on Powell Avenue and engaged the bus warning lights and retractable stop signs. Powell Avenue at that point was a three lane thoroughfare, and the bus was stopped partially occupying the two lanes farthest from Antonio's house. The attendant exited the bus with Antonio, escorted him around the front of the bus, left him standing by the driver's side of the bus in the center lane, and reboarded the bus. The bus driver, who assumed that the attendant had seen Antonio safely across the street, disengaged the warning devices and started to drive away. Sonya Clomon, an eighteen year old college student, who was driving her parents' automobile, saw the school bus with its warning lights activated as she approached Powell Avenue on a side street about one quarter mile away. But when Sonya turned onto Powell Avenue and drove toward the bus at a lawful speed of 35 MPH, the bus warning lights and stop signs had been disengaged, and the bus began to pull away from its stop. Sonya did not see Antonio standing in the center lane by the driver's side of the bus. As her vehicle passed the front of the bus, she saw Antonio attempting to cross the street. Sonya braked and veered the car but it struck Antonio just before ' he reached the other side of the avenue. Antonio died later that day from injuries sustained in the accident.
Nor do we detect any misuse of discretion in the trial judge's assessment of Sonya's damages:
Plaintiff claims that, as a result of the accident, she has suffered severe emotional trauma which aggravated her diabetic condition and caused a post-traumatic stress disorder. Following the accident, she was admitted to the Glenwood Hospital for diabetic reaction triggered by the accident, and in the summer of 1984, she spent about twenty-one (21) days in Woodland Hills, undergoing treatment and therapy by her psychiatrist, Dr. Gene Moore.
The Court believes that the plaintiff's complaints about the emotional trauma she suffered are real and genuine. Only a callous or stoic person would not be affected by this accident. Although time is a great healer of the mind, the trauma suffered by the plaintiff will long remain with her. The Court further believes that a considerable amount of her trauma was eliminated when the negligent homicide charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. [Sonya was charged with negligent homicide, arrested, booked and later released on bail on the night after the accident. Ultimately, she was permitted to plead nolo contendré to a charge of negligent operation and pay a fine of $150 for this offense on January 19, 1987.] For this type of injury, the Court finds $25,000 to be a fair award.
The trial court concluded that the bus driver, the attendant and Sonya were each guilty of negligent acts and omissions contributing to the accident. The court attributed 70% of the negligence to the school board employees, reduced Sonya's recovery by 30% to correspond with her portion of the fault, and entered judgment in her favor against the school board in the amount of $17,500. The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment, finding no error of fact and concluding that the trial court's decision was consistent with the court of appeal's previous decision holding that Sonya's cause of action was valid. Clomon v. Monroe City School Board, 557 So.2d 1100 (La.App. 2d Cir.1990).
In its previous decision, the court of appeal reversed a trial court ruling by which the lower court had sustained the school board's exception of no cause of action. Clomon v. Monroe City School Board, 490 So.2d 691 (La.App. 2d Cir.1986). The court of appeal held that under the facts alleged in the petition, which were substantially the same as the plaintiff later proved at trial, a cause of action had been stated for negligently inflicted emotional distress damages, because the school board employees had violated a "direct and separate [statutory] duty owed by the board to the motorist to operate the warning signals on the school bus until the child departing the bus reaches a place of safety, which duty is correlative to the duty owed by the motorist to obey these signals." Id. at 694. See La.R.S. 32:80. Further, the court of appeal held that the school board's policy imposing similar requirements on the bus driver and a separate obligation on the attendant to escort the child to a place of safety created a legal duty that "extends to protect not only the departing handicapped child, but, as well, the motorist who might strike the departing child if a breach of the duty of one or more employees of the board causes wholly or partly an accident between the motorist and the child, even though the motorist herself might be partially at fault in causing the accident." Id.
Sonya's application for certiorari by this court was denied. Clomon v. Monroe City School Board, 563 So.2d 886 (La.1990). We granted the school board's application, Clomon v. Monroe City School Board, 563 So.2d 869 (La.1990), to decide whether a plaintiff in Sonya's position should be barred from recovering damages for her negligently inflicted emotional distress for any or all of the following reasons: she was not closely related to the deceased victim of the accident; she sustained only emotional distress damage without immediate physical injuries in the collision; and she was contributorily negligent in causing the accident. These are the only issues presented because the school board's application and argument here are restricted to them.
1. Whether the Bystander Recovery Rule Applies
Civil Code Article 2315, in pertinent part, provides: "Every act whatever of man that causes damage to another obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it. " fun(jamentai civil law principle stated by this article has been a basic tenet of our law since 1808. See Art. 2315, La.C.C.Comp.Ed., in 17 West's LSA-C.C. p. 16 (1972). Although it is true that some exceptions have been made to the general principle that a person is liable for all damage caused by his fault, it is clear that in the absence of a statutory provision declaring an exception, or a compelling need for one to preserve the public interest, no such exception should be recognized by the courts.
One exception created by this court to the principle of complete reparation was the rule that a plaintiff may not recover for his emotional distress caused by a defendant's negligent infliction of injury upon a third person — even if the third person was the plaintiff's child or other loved one. Black v. Carrollton R.R. Co., 10 La.Ann. 33 (1855). See, also, Kaufman v. Clark, 141 La. 316, 75 So. 65 (1917); Brinkman v. St. Landry Cotton Oil Co., 118 La. 835, 43 So. 458 (1907); Sperier v. Ott, 116 La. 1087, 41 So. 323 (1906). Although it is debatable whether this court ever advanced any compelling policy for the exception or its broad, amorphous nature, the rule proved quite durable and was not overruled until earlier this year by our decision in Lejeune v. Rayne Branch Hospital, 556 So.2d 559 (La.1990). In the Lejeune case this court held that a wife had a cause of action under Civil Code Article 2315 for her negligently inflicted emotional distress which she sustained upon entering her comatose husband's hospital room and discovering that he had been bitten by rats just prior to her arrival. Acknowledging the formidable problems that judges and juries face in distinguishing fraudulent and idiosyncratic claims from meritorious ones, this court deemed it necessary to impose admittedly "somewhat arbitrary", Lejeune v. Rayne Branch Hospital, 556 So.2d 559, 569 (La.1990), restrictions on such claims in order to establish a "guaranty of merit against fraud" and other abuses. See 3 Harper, James and Gray, The Law of Torts 685 (2d ed. 1986); H. Smith, Relation of Emotions to Injury and Disease: Legal Liability for Psychic Stimuli, 30 Va.L.Rev. 193, 207 (1944). Thus, within the facts of the Lejeune case, this court concluded that mental pain and anguish claims arising out of injury to third persons are allowable, with these modifications and restrictions:
1.A claimant . must, however, either view the accident or injury-causing event or come upon the accident scene soon thereafter and before substantial change has occurred in the victim's condition.
2. The direct victim of the traumatic injury must suffer such harm that it can reasonably be expected that one in the plaintiff's position would suffer serious mental anguish from the experience.
3. The emotional distress sustained must be both serious and reasonably foreseeable to allow recovery.
4. A fourth restriction concerns the relationship of the claimant and the direct victim. . Regarding this fourth requirement, . we leave for another day a decision whether recovery should be allowed only for close relatives (and, if so which ones), or rather, for those with simply a close relationship to the victim.
Lejeune v. Rayne Branch Hospital, 556 So.2d 559, 570-71 (La.1990).
These restrictions or indicia of merit were modeled on those developed by courts in California and other states in Dillon v. Legg, 68 Cal.2d 728, 69 Cal.Rptr. 72, 441 P.2d 912 (1968) and its progeny. See, e.g., Thing v. Lachusa, 48 Cal.3d 644, 257 Cal.Rptr. 865, 771 P.2d 814 (1989); Champion v. Gray, 478 So.2d 17 (Fla.1985); Apache Ready Mix Co., Inc. v. Creed, 653 S.W.2d 79 (Tx.App.1983); Versland v. Carson Transport, 206 Mont. 313, 671 P.2d 583 (1983); Cohen v. McDonnel Douglas Corp., 389 Mass. 327, 450 N.E.2d 581 (1983); Sinn v. Burd, 486 Pa. 146, 404 A.2d 672 (1979); Gustafson v. Faris, 67 Mich.App. 363, 241 N.W.2d 208 (1976). Limitations of this type may be referred to very generally as "bystander recovery rules" because they are designed to permit recovery when a plaintiff closely related to the direct victim of an accident actually witnesses the injury as a bystander or comes upon the scene immediately afterward. For critical analyses of the bystander recovery development, see Pearson, Liability to Bystanders for Negligently Inflicted Emotional Harm — A Comment on the Nature of Arbitrary Rules, 34 U.Fla.L.Rev. 477 (1982); Comment, Dillon Revisited: Toward a Better Paradigm for Bystander Cases, 43 Ohio S.L.J. 931, 948 (1982); Note, Limiting Liability for the Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: The "Bystander Recovery" Cases, 54 S.Cal.L.Rev. 847 (1981); Dillon v. Legg Revisited: Toward a Unified Theory of Compensating Bystanders and Relatives for Intangible Injuries, 35 Hastings L.J. 477 (1984).
Prior to the advent of the bystander recovery rule the common law courts had resorted to other "somewhat arbitrary" limits to claims for negligently inflicted emotional distress. The two main restrictions were the "impact" and "zone of danger" rules. The latter is still adhered to by many courts which have thus far rejected the bystander recovery rule. Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts § 54, p. 366 (5th ed. 1984). See, e.g., Tobin v. Grossman, 24 N.Y.2d 609, 301 N.Y.S.2d 554, 249 N.E.2d 419 (1969); Rickey v. Chicago Transit Authority, 101 Ill.App.3d 439, 57 Ill.Dec. 46, 428 N.E.2d 596 (1981); Shelton v. Russell Pipe & Foundry Co., 570 S.W.2d 861 (Tenn.1978). Under the "impact" rule, the plaintiff in order to recover for negligently inflicted emotional distress without immediate physical injury was required to prove that the tortfeasor's conduct caused some "impact" upon the person of the plaintiff. Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts § 54, p. 363 (5th ed. 1984). See, e.g., Cadillac Motor Car Division v. Brown, 428 So.2d 301 (Fla.App. 1983); Deutsch v. Shein, 597 S.W.2d 141 (Ky.1980); Howard v. Bloodworth, 137 Ga. App. 478, 224 S.E.2d 122 (1976). The English and many American courts later adopted the "zone of danger" approach under which a plaintiff may recover for her emotional distress at the injury to her child if the plaintiff herself is threatened with physical injury by the defendant's negligence. Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts § 54 p. 365 (5th ed. 1984). See, e.g., Hambrook v. Stokes Brothers, 1 K.B. 141 (1925); Stadler v. Cross, 295 N.W.2d 552 (Minn.1980); Keck v. Jackson, 122 Ariz. 114, 593 P.2d 668 (1979); Vaillancourt v. Medical Center Hospital, 139 Vt. 138, 425 A.2d 92 (1980). Apparently, some courts believed, at least for a time, that satisfaction of the impact or zone of danger rule provided some necessary assurance or guaranty that the courts would not become besieged by claims that were feigned or born out of hypersensitivity.
In the present case, the defendant school board argues that Sonya's emotional distress does not qualify her for recovery under the Lejeune administrative strictures. The defendant forthrightly concedes that in all likelihood Sonya's proof satisfied three of the four bystander recovery restrictions, viz., that she was a percipient witness to the accident and the direct victim's injury; that the direct victim's injury reasonably could be expected to cause another to suffer serious mental anguish; and that the witness' emotional distress was serious. But the school board contends that Sonya's case fails to satisfy the fourth bystander recovery requisite, i.e., that the claimant had a close relationship with the direct victim.
We agree that Sonya cannot succeed under Lejeune's bystander recovery rule because she did not have a close relationship with the direct victim as required by the rule.. However, Lejeune does not govern every class of claim for emotional damage due to third party injury. Lejeune addressed only the most typical class, a suit by a plaintiff emotionally distressed by his loved one's injury against a tortfeasor based purely on a breach of the latter's general duty of due care. In formulating rules to establish a guaranty of merit for this broad class of claims, the Lejeune court did not intend to modify or interrupt the development of rules or decisions permitting recovery for emotional distress from a tortfeasor who owed the plaintiff a special, direct duty created by law, contract or special relationship. In fact, the court noted with evident approval a number of court of appeal decisions recognizing such an "independent duty owed to an aggrieved non-traumatically injured plaintiff." Lejeune v. Rayne Branch Hospital, 556 So.2d at 567; citing Bishop v. Callais, 533 So.2d 121 (La.App. 4th Cir.1988), writ denied, 536 So.2d 1214 (La.1989) (Parents stated a cause of action for mental anguish damages because of injuries inflicted upon their minor child while confined in a psychiatric hospital, and that the hospital may owe a duty to the parents.); Skorlich v. East Jefferson Gen. Hosp., 478 So.2d 916 (La.App. 5th Cir.1985) (Physician owed a duty to father and mother not to negligently injure the child during the birth process. Presumably, the court found that the father would suffer mental anguish from any possible injury to the child.); Holland v. St. Paul Mercury Ins. Co., 135 So.2d 145 (La.App. 1st Cir.1961) (Exterminating company owed an independent contractual duty to the parents, separate from the duty owed to their son who allegedly ingested rat poison.); Jordan v. Fidelity & Casualty Co., 90 So.2d 531 (La.App. 2d Cir.1956) (Negligent driver's breach of duty resulted in liability to other driver for mental distress arising out of concern over possible injury to unborn child where that driver's pregnant wife was riding in car at time of collision.); Champagne v. Hearty, 76 So.2d 453 (La.App.Orl.1955) (Landlord's duty to maintain property in a safe condition resulted in liability to pregnant tenant for mental anguish caused by fear that fetus was injured when ceiling plaster fell onto tenant.); Valence v. Louisiana Power & Light Co., 50 So.2d 847 (La.App.Orl.1951) (Bus driver's negligence in running into ditch made carrier liable to pregnant passenger and her husband for the mental anguish they suffered as a result of feared injury to fetus.). Moreover, this court in Lejeune expressly relied on its prior decision in Pitre v. Opelousas Gen. Hosp., 530 So.2d 1151 (La 1988) as presaging the overruling of Black v. Carrollton R.R. Co., 10 La.Ann. 33 (1855), and as "[rjecognizing the physician's duty to the parents to act reasonably so as to avoid acts or omissions which might foreseeably lead to the birth of a child (in a case where the doctor had undertaken a procedure to sterilize the mother) [and holding that] the parents had stated a cause of action for their emotional and mental distress associated with the birth of their 'unplanned and unwanted' child, since these were foreseeable consequences- of the alleged negligence." Lejeune v. Rayne Branch Hospital, 556 So.2d at 568.
Finally, Lejeune clearly recognized in expounding the fundamental principle of Civil Code Article 2315 that this basic precept favors the full reparation of wrongfully injured persons, Lejeune v. Rayne Branch Hospital, 556 So.2d at 568; that in formulating each delictual duty the social, moral and economic factors and other policy considerations pertinent under the particular circumstances must be weighed, Id.; and that "[mjoving from a jurisprudential situation where no claims have been allowed for mental pain and anguish relative to injury to third parties, to one in which some but not all claims will be allowed, of necessity requires some line drawing at the outset." Id. at 569.
Consequently, we conclude that this court is not precedentially bound to apply mechanistically the damage limitation rules of Lejeune to the present case. Instead, this case calls on us to employ familiar methodology in examining a statutory standard of conduct to decide whether it prescribes a direct, special duty to the plaintiff to compensate her for negligently inflicted emotional distress. Further, the delictual duty here involves a narrower category of potential claims with respect to which we must weigh a different mixture of empirical factors to determine whether the principle of full reparation should be applied without stint or cabined by prophylactic limitations.
2. Whether the Statute Prescribes a Duty to Repair Emotional Distress Damages
To determine whether Sonya established that the school board employees owed her a special, direct duty that they breached, entitling her to recover emotional distress damages caused by the violations, we follow a method similar to that of determining whether a defendant may be held liable in a negligence case on the basis of his violation of a statute. The bases for delictual liability relied upon by Sonya are the fault of the defendant's special education attendant in failing to escort or to see Antonio safely across the street and the fault of the defendant's bus driver in failing to comply with the statute governing the receiving and discharging of children from school buses. In this review we focus on the fault of the bus driver because it stems from the breach of a statutory duty which clearly was owed to a motorist in Sonya's position. It is not necessary to analyze the attendant's duty to determine whether it encompassed a special, direct duty owed to the motorist. Under La.R.S. 32:80 the bus driver has a direct, non-dele-gable duty to protect the child and the motorist in this situation. The bus driver cannot rely on the attendant in the performance of his legal duties to protect children and motorists. The actions and omissions of the bus driver alone justify the assessment of 70% of the negligence in this case to the school board.
The statute governing receiving and discharging children from school buses, La. R.S. 32:80, provides that a school bus driver must activate the bus's alternately flashing signal lights whenever he stops or is about to stop on the highway for the purpose of receiving or discharging children. La.R.S. 32:80(B)(1) and (2). The driver of a vehicle on a highway approaching a school bus that has stopped to receive or discharge school children must stop his vehicle not less than thirty feet from the school bus when its signal lights are flashing and not proceed until its signals are off or the bus resumes its trip. La.R.S. 32:80(A)(1). Any motorist convicted of violating this law shall be subject to a fine or imprisonment, or both. La.R.S. 32:80(A)(4). A school bus driver is authorized to notify law officials of a violation of this law, and a citation may be issued on the basis of such notice to the owner or lessee of a vehicle involved in a violation. La.R.S. 32:80(A)(3).
The process by which a child crosses an open highway to board or disembark from a school bus is charged with danger. Accordingly, the legislature has enacted the most stringent provisions feasible to safeguard the entire operation. The child, the bus driver and the motorist are constituents of this process, bound together legally and practically in a special, exigent relationship, from the moment the bus stops and signals until the child is safely across the roadway. See Westerfield v. LaFleur, 493 So.2d 600, 605 (1986). If the school bus driver and the motorist perform their duties properly, a child who crosses a typical roadway while leaving or entering an immobile signalized school bus is guarded from harm by a legal cordon during the entire time he is traversing the roadway. He and his parents are entitled to rely for his safe passage upon the motorist's observance of the safety zone and the bus driver's performance of his duty to activate highly visible signals, await the child's safe passage and report any motorist's violation of the legally protected passageway. The injury or death of a child during the protected receiving or discharge procedure can result in severe consequences for even an innocent motorist including criminal prosecution, civil damage suits, and moral opprobrium. Id.
It is clear that the bus driver in the present case violated her duties to await the safe passage of the child and to refrain from prematurely deactivating the signals or resuming her trip. It is equally apparent that the busperson's breach of the statutory duty caused the damage. Sonya is entitled to the presumption that she would have heeded a proper warning, and there is nothing in the record to indicate that she would have failed to do so. Bloxom v. Bloxom, 512 So.2d 839, 850 (La.1987); Vickers v. Chiles Drilling Co., 882 F.2d 158 (5th Cir.1989). In determining whether the bus driver's violation was a breach of a delictual duty owed specially and directly to Sonya it is necessary to examine the purposes of the legislation and decide (1) whether Sonya falls within the class of persons it was intended to protect and (2) whether the harm complained of was of the kind which the statute was intended, in general, to prevent. See Carter v. City Parish Government of East Baton Rouge, 423 So.2d 1080 (La.1982); Boyer v. Johnson, 360 So.2d 1164 (La.1978); Prosser & Keeton, supra § 36 at 225.
Having examined the provisions of the statute, we conclude that by vesting the bus driver with authority similar to that of a policeman to direct the motorist's use of the highway under pain of criminal penalty the legislature has also imposed upon the bus driver the duty to perform his role properly for the benefit of the motorist. Consequently, the motorist is required and entitled to rely for his safety, convenience and peace of mind upon the bus driver's performance of his duty to activate highly visible signals, await the child's safe passage and remain as a stationary sentinel until the child's security is clearly assured. It is obvious that the bus driver's dereliction may result in minimal to extreme consequences for the motorist including his fright at a near miss, his own physical injury or property damage, or his serious emotional and mental illness associated with a child's injury or death, as in the present case. Moreover, it is evident that the bus driver's duty is owed not only to the careful motorist but also to the inattentive driver who may have relied on the busman's signals or lack thereof. Although the bus driver's duty is not imposed to protect the utterly indifferent or foolhardy, its protection is not restricted to those whose senses are precisely attuned to the prospect of the particular danger encountered. The evidence does not indicate that Sonya would have been oblivious to the flashing signals had they been activated or to the motionlessness of the bus had it remained stationary. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that if such warnings had been given, Antonio's tragic death would have been avoided as well as Sonya's emotional distress and illness. See Levi v. SLEMCO, 542 So.2d 1081, 1089 (La.1989); Malone, Cause In Fact, 9 Stanford L.Rev. (1956).
By the same token, we believe that the harm that befell Sonya was within the class of harms that the statute was intended to guard against. Cf. Carter v. City Parish Government of East Baton Rouge, 423 So.2d 1080 (La.1983). The accident resulted from exactly the kind of risk which the statute was designed to prevent. Cf. Boyer v. Johnson, 360 So.2d 1164 (La.1978); Smolinski v. Taulli, 276 So.2d 286 (La.1973). Sonya's damage was included within the same general risk, or class of risk, at which the statute is directed. In the absence or any other guide in the legislation itself, a statute may well be assumed to include all risks that reasonably may be anticipated as likely to follow from its violation. Prosser & Keeton, supra § 36 at 226-27 n. 65, 66. It is reasonable to expect that a motorist who unexpectedly encounters a small child in the roadway after a school bus has extinguished its warning lights and has departed may become involved in various types of accidents. It is also predictable that some of these mishaps will foreseeably lead to either physical or emotional trauma, or both, for the motorist involved. For all of these reasons, and because the motorist is placed in a position of reliance by the law and the acts or omissions of the school bus driver, it would not be just to deny the motorist recovery for any damage attributable to the bus driver's negligence.
Moreover, in this type of case the plaintiff-motorist usually will be a percipient witness to the injury, and her claim of serious emotional distress can be considered in light of the objective circumstances of the accident and injury absent the complicating factor of any personal relationship with the direct victim. Consequently, we conclude that in the narrow class of cases involving the direct, special statutory duty owed to the motorist, there is no justification for the creation of juristic limitations upon the principle of reparation underlying Civil Code Article 2315. Accordingly, Sonya should be permitted to recover for her severe emotional distress and other consequent injuries that were found to be genuine by each lower court and conceded to be proven by the defendant.
3. Whether Recovery is Barred by Sonya's Contributory Negligence
Civil Code Article 2323 (1980) provides: "When contributory negligence is applicable to a claim for damages, its effect shall be as follows: If a person suffers injury, death or loss as the result partly of his own negligence and partly as a result of the fault of another person or persons, the claim for damages shall not thereby be defeated, but the amount of damages recoverable shall be reduced in proportion to the degree or percentage of negligence attributable to the person suffering the injury, death or loss." In view of the clear mandate of Civil Code Article 2323 (1980), there is no basis in law for barring rather than reducing Sonya's recovery. Under the circumstances of this case, barring Sonya's recovery would be tantamount either to resurrecting the legislatively abrogated doctrine of contributory negligence or to concluding that the bus driver owed Sonya no duty, a proposition which we must reject for the reasons advanced above.
DECREE
The judgments of the trial court and the court of appeal in favor of plaintiff Sonya Clomon and against the defendant the Monroe City School Board are affirmed at relator's cost.
AFFIRMED.
WATSON, J., concurs and assigns reasons.
HALL, J., joins in the opinion and adds concurring reasons.
MARCUS, J., dissents and assigns reasons.
COLE, J., dissents and assigns reasons.