Opinion ID: 4566362
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Contemporaneous Perception

Text: [¶23] To begin, we conclude, as have other courts, that a bystander’s contemporaneous perception of an accident includes the awareness of an accident that arises from any of a person’s senses, not only sight.15 See, e.g., Clohessy v. Bachelor, 675 A.2d 852, 863 (Conn. 1996) (requiring a “contemporaneous sensory perception” (emphasis added)); Folz v. State, 797 P.2d 246, 260 (N.M. 1990) (same); Neff v. Lasso, 555 A.2d 1304, 1313 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1989) (“It is the immediate sensory awareness and not the source (i.e. visual, tactile, aural, gustatory or olfactory)[] of the awareness which must control.”). Accordingly, we must recognize that when a bystander does perceive an 15 See Perceive, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed. 2016) (defining “perceive” as “[t]o become aware of (something) directly through any of the senses, especially sight or hearing”). 18 accident through a sense other than sight—in this case, by hearing a “loud bang” and screaming—there will undoubtedly be some brief moment of time that elapses between when the bystander hears or otherwise perceives the sound of an accident occurring and when the bystander then becomes aware of what it was that the bystander has heard. See, e.g., Groves v. Taylor, 729 N.E.2d 569, 571-73 (Ind. 2000) (holding that a sister could recover for NIED when she heard a car accident occur and then turned around to witness “her brother’s body as it rolled off the highway”). In such instances, we also must recognize the distinction between the initial injury-producing event that a bystander may hear and the immediate aftermath of such an event that a bystander may then see.16 Therefore, in order to “strik[e] a fair balance between the need to compensate foreseeable psychic injuries and the risk of imposing limitless liability,” Michaud, 1998 ME 213, ¶ 15, 715 A.2d 955, we must confine the amount of time that may elapse between a bystander’s initial perception of the injury-producing event and the bystander’s direct observation of the injuries and, thus, limit those circumstances that may be included within the contemporaneous perception of an event. When discussing the term “injury-producing event,” we define that term as the moment when 16 an injury is first inflicted on a victim. Thus, in this case, the injury-producing event occurred when the load of rebar fell and struck Philip. 19 [¶24] The Cowards urge us to adopt the rule from Eskin v. Bartee, 262 S.W.3d 727, 739 (Tenn. 2008). There, after a mother received a telephone call informing her that her son “had been hurt” as a result of being struck by a car, the mother drove to the scene of the accident. Id. at 730-31. Upon arriving at the scene, the mother witnessed her injured son “lying on the pavement in a pool of blood.” Id. at 730. In ruling on the mother’s NIED claim, the court concluded that it was “appropriate and fair to permit recovery of damages” for those plaintiffs “who arrive at the scene of the accident while the scene is in essentially the same condition it was in immediately after the accident.” Id. at 738. Thus, the court held that, “[w]hen a plaintiff did not witness the injury-producing event,” a plaintiff must prove, in part, an “observation of the actual or apparent death or serious physical injury at the scene of the accident before the scene has been materially altered.” Id. at 739 (emphasis added); see also Hegel v. McMahon, 960 P.2d 424, 429 (Wash. 1998) (allowing recovery when a bystander “observ[es] an injured relative at the scene of an accident after its occurrence and before there is substantial change in the relative’s condition or location”); Roitz v. Kidman, 913 P.2d 431, 433 (Wyo. 1996) (“Once the victim’s condition or location has materially changed . . . the moment of 20 crisis for which recovery is allowed is deemed to have passed . . . .” (quotation marks omitted)). [¶25] Although the rule expressed in Eskin does impose a limitation on a bystander’s perception of the immediate aftermath of an injury-producing event, the law as applied in the circumstances of that case does not square with our view. First, the mother was not present at the scene when the injury was inflicted on her child and, thus, was unable to contemporaneously perceive through any of her senses the injury-producing event. Second, we find this rule too broad and potentially ambiguous when applied. A rule that requires a determination of whether the accident scene had been “materially altered,” Eskin, 262 S.W.3d at 739, is inherently vague and could expand recovery to those bystanders who, like the mother in Eskin, learn of a relative’s injuries through a phone call or other indirect means, but are still permitted to recover so long as the accident scene has not been altered. Cf. Cameron, 610 A.2d at 280, 284-85. [¶26] More instructive are those cases, like here, where a bystander is present at the scene, hears—but does not see—the injury-producing event, and then directly observes an injured relative moments later. In Groves v. Taylor, where a brother and sister walked down their driveway toward the road to 21 check their family’s mailbox, the sister turned her back and began to walk back up the driveway as the brother crossed the road to reach the mailbox. 729 N.E.2d at 571. The sister then heard a “big pop” as a vehicle struck the brother and turned around to see “her brother’s body as it rolled off the [road].” Id. (quotation marks omitted). There, in permitting the sister to recover for her emotional distress, the court concluded that the sister’s aural perception of the car accident and visual perception of the resulting injuries moments later were sufficient for her to have “witnessed or c[o]me on the scene soon after the death or severe injury of a loved one.” Id. at 573; see also Bennett v. Wal-Mart Stores E., L.P., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49120, at  (W.D. Pa. Mar. 26, 2018) (concluding that a mother had contemporaneously perceived an accident when she “heard a ‘commotion,’ and turned back [toward her daughter] to discover her daughter on her hands and knees on the floor, crying loudly”). [¶27] Similarly, in Corso v. Merrill, a mother and father were in their kitchen when their child was struck by a car fifty feet away from their home. 406 A.2d 300, 302 (N.H. 1979). The mother heard a “terrible thud” at the moment of the car accident and then looked outside to see her child “lying seriously injured in the street in front of the house.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). The father, upon hearing the mother scream, “immediately ran out 22 the door” and witnessed his injured child. Id. In recognizing that a bystander’s “emotional injury must be directly attributable to the emotional impact of the plaintiff's observation or contemporaneous sensory perception of the accident and immediate viewing of the accident victim,” the court concluded that the mother’s “auditory perception and her immediate observance of the accident” were sufficient to state a claim for NIED and that the father’s perception of the accident was “so close to the reality of the accident as to render his experience an integral part of it.” Id. at 306-07 (alteration omitted) (quotation marks omitted); see also Acosta v. Castle Constr., Inc., 868 P.2d 673, 673-75 (N.M. Ct. App. 1994) (vacating a summary judgment entered against a brother working at a construction site who “heard a series of screams,” immediately ran towards the location of the screaming, and, seconds later, observed “his brother’s mouth and nostrils . . . still smoking as a result of his brother’s electrocution”). [¶28] After reviewing these cases and the reasoning articulated by other courts, we are persuaded that a bystander may recover for a claim of NIED when, as here, that bystander hears an accident occur and then in its immediate aftermath witnesses a close relative severely injured. Therefore, we hold that, when a bystander does not directly see an injury-producing event in the 23 moment the injury is first inflicted on the victim, the bystander, if present at the scene, may nonetheless “contemporaneously perceive[e] the accident,” Cameron, 610 A.2d at 284-85, through a sensory perception of the injury-producing event as it occurs and an observation of the victim’s injuries or death in the immediate aftermath of that event. To establish that the bystander’s observation of the victim’s injuries occurred in the immediate aftermath of the injury-producing event, a bystander must demonstrate that the bystander perceived the injuries or death of the victim as an immediate result of the bystander’s initial nonvisual perception of the injury-producing event.17 Although we do not adopt a specific amount of time within which a bystander must witness the victim’s injuries or death, it is clear that when a bystander hears the injury-producing event as it occurs and only seconds later witnesses the victim dead or severely injured, this brief amount of time is sufficiently immediate to fall within this temporal limitation. See Groves, 729 N.E.2d at 571, 573; Corso, 406 A.2d at 302, 307; Acosta, 868 P.2d at 673-75. 17 To further clarify, the “immediate aftermath” of the injury-producing event does not include a bystander’s perception of the victim’s pain and suffering away from where the accident occurred, nor does it include those situations where the bystander does not perceive, in any manner, the occurrence of the injury-producing event and learns of the event only through other, indirect means. See Champagne, 1998 ME 87, ¶ 14, 711 A.2d 842; Cameron, 610 A.2d at 280, 284-85; see also Clifton v. McCammack, 43 N.E.3d 213, 221-23 (Ind. 2015); Contreras v. Carbon Cnty. Sch. Dist. No. 1, 843 P.2d 589, 593-94 (Wyo. 1992); Wilder v. Keene, 557 A.2d 636, 639 (N.H. 1989). 24 [¶29] We do not here create an “expansive application” of the standard adopted in Culbert and Cameron, nor do we disregard “the necessity of avoiding both unlimited liability and liability out of all proportion to culpability.” Cameron, 610 A.2d. at 283-285. Rather, we recognize that “[w]itnessing either an incident causing death or serious injury or the gruesome aftermath of such an event . . . is an extraordinary experience, distinct from the experience of learning of a family member’s death through indirect means.” Bowen v. Lumbermens Mut. Cas. Co., 517 N.W.2d 432, 444-45 (Wis. 1994).