Opinion ID: 1201607
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Independent Duty

Text: Firestone first asks the court to expressly adopt the rule recently applied by the Supreme Court of Texas in Boyles v. Kerr (Tex. 1993) 855 S.W.2d 593. There the court held that there is no duty to avoid negligently causing emotional distress to another, and that damages for emotional distress are recoverable only if the defendant has breached some other duty to the plaintiff. ( Id., at p. 594.) (2) That is already the law in California. Indeed, the Texas court relied on recent decisions of this court in which we recognized that there is no independent tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress. ( Boyles v. Kerr, supra, 855 S.W.2d at p. 599.) The tort is negligence, a cause of action in which a duty to the plaintiff is an essential element. (See Burgess v. Superior Court (1992) 2 Cal.4th 1064, 1073 [9 Cal. Rptr.2d 615, 831 P.2d 1197] [hereafter Burgess ]; Christensen v. Superior Court, supra, 54 Cal.3d 868, 890-891; Marlene F. v. Affiliated Psychiatric Medical Clinic, Inc. (1989) 48 Cal.3d 583, 590 [257 Cal. Rptr. 98, 770 P.2d 278] [hereafter Marlene F. ]; see also Anderson v. Northrop Corp. (1988) 203 Cal. App.3d 772, 776 [250 Cal. Rptr. 189].) That duty may be imposed by law, be assumed by the defendant, or exist by virtue of a special relationship. ( Marlene F., supra, 48 Cal.3d at p. 590.) The lesson of these decisions is: unless the defendant has assumed a duty to plaintiff in which the emotional condition of the plaintiff is an object, recovery is available only if the emotional distress arises out of the defendant's breach of some other legal duty and the emotional distress is proximately caused by that breach of duty. Even then, with rare exceptions, a breach of the duty must threaten physical injury, not simply damage to property or financial interests. (See Cooper v. Superior Court (1984) 153 Cal. App.3d 1008, 1012-1013 [200 Cal. Rptr. 746]; Quezada v. Hart (1977) 67 Cal. App.3d 754, 761-763 [136 Cal. Rptr. 815]; cf. Holliday v. Jones (1989) 215 Cal. App.3d 102, 117, 119 [264 Cal. Rptr. 448].) (3a) Those limits on recovery for emotional distress caused by the negligent conduct of another do not aid Firestone here, however. Firestone did violate a duty imposed on it by law and regulation to dispose of toxic waste only in a class I landfill and to avoid contamination of underground water. [9] The violation led directly to plaintiffs' ingestion of various known and suspected carcinogens, and thus to their fear of suffering the very harm which the Legislature sought by statute to avoid. Their fear of cancer was proximately caused by Firestone's unlawful conduct which threatened serious physical injury. This is not a case in which a negligence cause of action is predicated only on a claim that the defendant breached a duty to avoid causing emotional distress.