Opinion ID: 883677
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Physical Manifestation Exception

Text: In Cashin v. Northern Pacific Ry. Co. (1934), 96 Mont. 92, 28 P.2d 862, the plaintiff was hanging clothes just beyond her kitchen door when there was a blast from work on a nearby railroad line. The railroad had been using dynamite to remove large boulders from the pathway of the rail line. The following facts and testimony are pertinent to our discussion of the Cashin case: She [the plaintiff, Mrs. Cashin,] testified that she heard the detonation and saw rocks falling about the yard; she raised her arms and felt pain between her shoulders and knew no more until some time later, when she regained consciousness in a chair in the house. ..... Dr. J.L. McCarthy, of Butte, described Mrs. Cashin's condition as he found it shortly after the blasting and continuing thereafter as that of shattered nerves from shock comparable to that of shell-shocked veterans. Mrs. Cashin testified that, while she had been nervous before and had been troubled by former blasts so that, at night, she was made nervous by the passage of the watchman's car on the track as indicating that another blast might be set off in the night, her present condition was due to the shock of this last blasting. Cashin, 28 P.2d at 865. An action was brought to recover for `severe and violent shock, both of body and mind,' causing permanent impairment of plaintiff's health. Cashin, 28 P.2d at 865. Plaintiff was awarded $2,000 in damages and the defendant appealed contending that there could be no recovery for the fright or shock because there was no physical injury. We held that a cause of action existed because the plaintiff had suffered a physical injury in the form of nervous shock or paroxysm, or a disturbance of the nervous system which fell in the category of physiological, not psychological injury. Cashin, 28 P.2d at 866. Thus, we concluded that the shock or fright occasioned by the blast was itself a physical injury. Kelly v. Lowney and Williams (1942), 113 Mont. 385, 126 P.2d 486, was a personal injury action wherein the court's instruction required that the jury consider, in assessing damages, the deceased plaintiff's: ... fright and mental shock, if any, and all pain and suffering, if any, of mind and body, insofar as caused by fright and mental shock, if any. Also her, Nellie Kelly's death. You may also consider any impairment of the plaintiff's health, physical or mental, as a consequence of fright or shock, if any, whether the impairment be permanent or only temporary. Kelly, 123 P.2d at 488. Nellie Kelly had been injured when a neighbor's car crashed into the Kelly home, severely frightening her. Nellie did not come into physical contact with the car but heard the crash because she was in the house at the time. After the crash, Nellie was worried, nervous, could not sleep and would not sleep in her room but slept in the living room where she was subject to a draft. She died about six months after the crash from complications from colds, ostensibly caught from sleeping in a drafty place. At trial, we found error with the above instruction and remanded the case for a retrial of the cause of action. However, the Court premised its finding of error on that part of the instruction which instructed the jury to consider Kelly's death in assessing the damages. We concluded that the jury should not have considered Kelly's death because the crash was not a proximate cause of death and any damages award would naturally be much higher if the jury considered the plaintiff's death, as well as her injuries. The Court did state that in Montana, there may be recovery for damages for personal injuries occasioned by fright or mental shock though there be no physical contact, citing Cashin. Kelly, 126 P.2d at 488. Although we did not discuss our reasoning for allowing the jury to consider the plaintiff's fright and mental shock, it appears that the Court considered Kelly's fright and shock to be a physical injury in and of itself as in Cashin.