Opinion ID: 1187842
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Severity of the Injury to the Primary Victim

Text: As an assurance of genuine shock, the courts that have adopted the tort have generally agreed that the person claiming emotional harm must witness a serious accident or its aftermath. The primary victim must, in fact, be seriously injured or killed and the claimant must realize, at the time he witnesses the event, that the injuries are serious. E.g., Versland v. Caron Transport, Mont., 671 P.2d 583 (1983); Comment, Dillon Revisited, supra, at 948. Serious injury is the same as serious bodily injury as defined in the Wyoming Criminal Code. It means bodily injury which creates a substantial risk of death or which causes miscarriage, severe disfigurement or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ. Section 6-1-104(a)(x), W.S. 1977, Cum.Supp. 1985. We base this limitation on the common sense notion that people recover from serious shock quickly if it turns out to be a false alarm. See Comment, Negligently Inflicted Mental Distress: The Case for an Independent Tort, 59 Georgetown L.Rev. 1237, 1249-1251 (1971), for a discussion of this common sense idea in medical terms.