Opinion ID: 1127641
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: injury to plaintiff

Text: Daily is armed with substantial evidence on the factual issue of damages. Mariner v. Marsden, 610 P.2d 6, 11-12 (Wyo.1980) ( quoting Anderson v. Welding Testing Laboratory, Inc., 304 So.2d 351, 352 (La.1974)). However, because Daily alleges mental injury, the district court was drawn down the garden path of negligent infliction of emotional distress by resourceful counsel for Bone's estate and Case. A certain historic reluctance to assess damages based upon mental suffering, alone, may be attributable to uncritical acceptance of sonorous though suspect assertions that [m]ental pain or anxiety the law cannot value, and does not pretend to redress, when the unlawful act complained of causes that alone. Lynch v. Knight, 9 H.L.C. 577, 598, 11 Eng.Rep. 854, 863 (1861) (quoted in Calvert Magruder, Mental and Emotional Disturbance in the Law of Torts, 49 Harv.L.Rev. 1033, 1033 (1936)). Surprisingly, though, a pre-Chaucerian English barmaid successfully sued the irate customer who sought better service with a hand axe which flew wide of its mark only when the serving girl ducked. I de S v. W de S, 22 Y.B. Edward III, f. 99, pl. 60 (1348). Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. understood the logic of that ancient victory sufficiently to write for the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts that: it is an arbitrary exception, based upon a notion of what is practicable, that prevents a recovery for visible illness resulting from nervous shock alone. Homans v. Boston Elevated Ry. Co., 180 Mass. 456, 457, 62 N.E. 737, 737 (1902). Homans concerned a rail passenger who received a slight blow as a consequence of the rail company's fault in the operation of a train and afterwards had a good deal of suffering of a hysterical nature   . The passenger eventually claimed damages solely for nervous shock arising from the battery. Id. Chief Justice Holmes wrote that such injuries were compensable when there has been a battery and the nervous shock results from the same wrongful management as the battery[.] Id. It is a fair statement of Wyoming law that Daily had a right to go about the public roads or places on [her] own business, free from molestation by [Bone] or any one, so long as [she] conducted [her]self in an orderly manner.    And any one guilty of violating any of these rights is liable for the actual damages suffered therefrom by the injured person. It matters not whether the wrong be one of pure neglect or a wanton or willful wrong; an action will lie for the actual damages suffered. Williams v. Campbell, 22 Wyo. 1, 6, 133 P. 1071, 1072 (1913). The record before us suggests that Bone negligently injured Daily by the collision. If she can prove negligence, impact, and damages proximately flowing therefrom, recovery should not be denied simply because her injuries are mental rather than physical. Such a recovery would be predicated upon the traditional, completed tort found when the negligence of one party results in an automobile collision which causes injury to the other party. Whether there can be a recovery for the consequences of fright caused by unintentional want of care depends in the first place upon the question whether a legal right of the plaintiff has been invaded by the defendant's negligence. Comstock v. Wilson, 257 N.Y. 231, 177 N.E. 431, 433 (1931). Here, the impact was an invasion of Daily's right to go about her business free from molestation[.] Williams, 133 P. at 1072. When duty, breach and cause are established, recovery of damages for mental injury is not novel to Wyoming jurisprudence. W.C.P.J.I., No. 4.01 shows pain and suffering to be the first claimed element of damages. In the aftermath of a negligent impact, each succeeding element of damages in that instruction might be susceptible of proof notwithstanding the purely mental character of the injury. W.C.P.J.I., No. 4.01(b) through (f).