Opinion ID: 8484787
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: May M.A Independently Recover for Negligently Inflicted Emotional Distress?

Text: The final question centers on M.A.’s right to recover independently of J.A. for emotional distress that M.A. incurred as a result of the misdiagnosis of her daughter’s condition. To recover in an action for negligent infliction of emotional distress, M.A. must have a viable “bystander claim” or establish that J.A.’s physician owed M.A. a preexisting duty. Chizmar v. Mackie, 896 P.2d 196, 201, 203-04 (Alaska 1995); see also Hawks v. State of Alaska, 908 P.2d 1013, 1016 (Alaska 1995). M.A. asserts that she was owed an independent duty by her daughter’s physician — that, in assuming responsibility for treating J.A., J.A.’s physician also “undertook a duty directly to M.A. to act with the degree of knowledge or skill possessed or the degree of care ordinarily exercised under the circumstances by health care providers[.]” Yet the source of a physician’s duty to provide reasonably competent care lies in the unique nature of the physician-patient relationship. 15 M.A. had no physician-patient relationship with her daughter’s physician; nor does M.A. establish any other source from which a duty toward her might have arisen. 16 Furthermore, the circumstances of this case, could not support the type of “bystander claim” that allows recovery for emotional distress in the absence of a preexisting duty. Under Mattingly v. Sheldon Jackson College, 743 P.2d 356, 365-66 (Alaska 1987), a bystander claim is permissible when a person closely related to a tort victim and in near proximity to the scene of the negligent injury suffers severe and foreseeable emotional distress due to “shock resulting] more or less contemporaneously with,” or “follow[ing] closely on the heels of,” the injury’s discovery. Here, M.A. was not in close proximity to J.A., either at the time of the alleged misdiagnosis or when J.A. subsequently learned of her pregnancy; M.A.’s eventual “shock,” if any, does not appear to have occurred contemporaneously with her daughter’s discovery of the injury; and there is no indication that the immediate “shock” came in response to the alleged injury — the lateness of the pregnancy’s discovery — rather than to discovery of the pregnancy itself. We do not question the devastating emotional impact on M.A. that was caused by news of J.A.’s pregnancy. The present case is nevertheless clearly not a suitable one for bystander recovery. Absent any colorable claim of a preexisting duty by J.A’s physician toward M.A. or of circumstances creating bystander liability, M.A has no independent right to recover for emotional distress resulting from negligent misdiagnosis of her daughter’s condition.