Court Opinion

ID: 9751837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:08:49.380487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:00.488990
License: Public Domain

RUIZ, Associate Judge,
concurring:
This is a case in which no one disputes that appellant was owed a duty by appel-lees, and he has presented evidence that as a result of their breach of the standard of care, he suffered severe and verifiable emotional distress. Thus, but for the rule set out in Williams, as it has been applied in subsequent cases, appellant would be entitled to present his case to the jury. I write separately because I believe that this case warrants reconsideration by the full court of the applicability of the Williams “zone of physical danger” requirement to cases where foreseeable and severe emotional distress is inflicted on a patient as a result of breach of the standard of care. When dealing with common law, as we do here, courts should revisit and reconsider rules when subsequent legal or other developments so warrant.
In abandoning the “impact rule” and adopting the “zone of danger” doctrine in Williams, we meant to expand the reach of tort law, recognizing that “[t]he tortfea-sor owes a duty of care to all persons who are physically endangered by the tortfea-sor’s negligent act, regardless of whether actual impact occurs.” Williams, 572 A.2d at 1067 (citations omitted).10 In reaching this conclusion, we cited advances in medical research and improved diagnostic techniques that can objectively verify and assess emotional distress such as grief, anxiety and anger, which mitigated the concerns that had led to the requirement that, to recover for emotional distress, a plaintiff must have received an actual physical impact. See id. Unwilling to eliminate all limitations, Williams held that so long as the plaintiff is in the “zone of physical danger,” she may recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress. See id.
Appellant presents compelling arguments as to why, just as we held in Williams that the requirement of physical impact should not be interposed to defeat otherwise meritorious claims, it is similarly unnecessary to require that a plaintiff be in the “zone of physical danger” as a condition of recovery in certain extreme situations. He points, specifically, to the circumstances of this case, where there was a direct doctor-patient relationship and the emotional harm caused by the negligent misdiagnosis of a potentially life-threatening condition is so severe, and so foreseeable, that it provides assurance that a claim to recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress is genuine, and is unlikely to subject doctors and other healthcare providers to spurious claims.
*1234According to appellant, the concerns we expressed in Williams — the need to safeguard against fraudulent claims, the difficulty of establishing the nature and extent of emotional distress injury, and the fear of opening the floodgates of litigation, Williams, 572 A.2d at 1067, are not present where the emotional injury is as serious and clearly caused by the negligent conduct as can be shown in this case. See id. (“[Fjear of opening the gates to a flood of litigation [should not] be determinative of whether the interest in question should be legally protected.”). Nor is the policy reason we expressed in Jane W., see discussion at pages 7-8 and note 9, supra, a significant factor in a situation where, as here, a medical facility is not acting proactively to protect patients, but rather has so clearly deviated from the standard of care.
Other jurisdictions have noted that there should be an exception to the “zone of physical” danger requirement for cases where there exists “an especial likelihood of genuine and serious mental distress, arising from the special circumstances, which serves as a guarantee that the claim is not spurious.” Johnson v. State, 37 N.Y.2d 378, 372 N.Y.S.2d 638, 334 N.E.2d 590, 592 (1975) (citation omitted).11 In Baker v. Dorfman, 239 F.3d 415, 422 (2d Cir.2000), the Second Circuit applied the Johnson rule to a case where the plaintiff sued to recover for emotional distress resulting from a clinic’s negligence in informing him of an erroneous HIV-positive test. And, in some jurisdictions, the “zone of physical danger” requirement is applied only to claimants who are bystanders. See Corgan v. Muehling, 143 Ill.2d 296, 158 Ill.Dec. 489, 574 N.E.2d 602, 606 (1991) (noting that “the zone-of-physical-danger rule is patently inapplicable to direct victims”); Johnson v. Commodore Cruise Lines, Ltd., 897 F.Supp. 740, 745 (S.D.N.Y. 1995) (“The ‘zone of danger’ rule has to do with situations where plaintiff has witnessed or has otherwise been affected by a traumatic injury to a third person.”).
This issue can present difficult choices and imprecise line-drawing. But it is an important one. I write separately because I believe that, if asked to do so, this may be an opportune case for the full court to revisit the question.

. Under the “impact rule” then extant in the District of Columbia, in order to state a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress, the plaintiff needed to prove not only that there had been a physical impact, but that the emotional injury "flow[ed] directly from direct physical injury.” Williams, 572 A.2d at 1064.

. In Johnson, the hospital negligently misinformed kin that a patient, who was very much alive, had died. See Johnson, 372 N.Y.S.2d 638, 334 N.E.2d at 590-92.