Court Opinion

ID: 9726934
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:13:30.707038+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:32.012530
License: Public Domain

Hennessey, C.J.
(dissenting as to the answer to question two). I dissent from the majority’s answer to question two. At the outset, several points should be made about the scope of question two. The question asks whether a plaintiff is barred from recovery for “damage suffered as a result of the mother’s ingestion of DES” if the plaintiff “would probably not have been born except for the mother’s ingestion of DES.” This question is not limited to cases in which negligence consists of failure to warn, and the present action is itself based on allegations of negligence in testing as well as warning. Nor is question two limited to cases in which the alleged negligence was necessary to reach the beneficial result; in other words, to cases in which the plaintiff would not have been born but for the particular manner in which the defendants tested and manufactured the drug.
*576Taking into account the full breadth of question two, the majority’s affirmative answer provides a negligent manufacturer of a life sustaining product with an excuse from liability whenever it can show that its product probably saved a plaintiff’s life.
In effect, a tortfeasor who causes harm, but by the same stroke confers a benefit, need not answer for the harm. Such a rule departs from ordinary principles of tort liability. One would not expect, for example, that a doctor guilty of negligent malpractice could point to harm he may have averted as grounds for escaping liability. It is the doctor’s business to provide a beneficial service. He was engaged and paid in the expectation that he would prevent or remedy a problem, and the successful accomplishment of this purpose should not affect the doctor’s liability for injury caused by his negligence in providing the service. See, e.g., Malone v. Bianchi, 318 Mass. 179 (1945) (dentist extracting teeth dropped tooth down patient’s throat). Similarly, the defendants’ product was expected to save lives, and marketed for that purpose. The fact that it did what it was intended to do has no place in the question of liability for injury caused by negligence. That aspect of the relationship between a plaintiff and a defendant belongs on an independent plane. For purposes of the negligence claim, the plaintiffs should be viewed as living persons who have suffered injury.1
Even a negligent rescuer, whose services are often gratuitous, is liable for injury caused by his negligence, despite the possibility that he may have averted some form of harm to the plaintiff. See Michon v. Metropolitan Transit Auth., 345 Mass. 50, 51 (1962). The majority distinguishes the rescuer by pointing to a comment in the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 323, Comment c (1965), to the effect that a rescuer is liable for negligence because, by undertaking a rescue, he risks increasing the other’s peril. Yet that justification *577arises from the risk that the peril might be increased, not from the probability that it might be increased. Under the approach taken by the majority, it would seem that any time a negligent rescuer could show that the plaintiff probably would not have survived but for the rescuer’s actions, recovery should be denied. Moreover, the danger that the rescuer may worsen the plaintiff’s predicament is important only as a justification for imposing a duty of care on one who is otherwise under no duty to act. Once this duty arises, the possibility that a negligent rescuer prevented other disaster should not affect his liability for injuries caused by his negligence. In the case of a manufacturer, the underlying duty of care to those likely to be affected by the product is well established. If, for example, an oxygen tent that saved a patient’s life was negligently made, the patient, according to the law as stated by the majority, would be unable to recover for resulting injuries if the manufacturer could prove that at the time of its usage, only the manufacturer’s oxygen tent could have saved the patient’s life. There is no sound reason why the life-sustaining properties of the product should provide an excuse from liability.
Finally, despite the deceptive facts that the victims in the cases before us were unborn when the harm was first inflicted and that the assumed benefit of the defendants’ product was preservation of life, the reasoning of the so called “wrongful birth” cases are not determinative.
In a wrongful birth case, the harm alleged is life itself — in other words, impaired life, as compared to no life. The theory advanced in such a case is that the defendant has obstructed a decision against life that the plaintiff’s parents might otherwise have made. Courts have denied recovery on this unusual theory because it calls for an impossible assessment of the relative values of life and no life. Damages, if allowed, would be a monetary estimate of the allegedly greater value of never having been born.
If the only form of negligence contemplated by question two were failure to warn, “wrongful birth” cases might provide analogy. The only “harm” causally connected to such *578negligence would be the mother’s decision to take the drug, and thereby to bring about the plaintiff’s life. If, however, the problem is one of inadequate testing, when testing might have revealed a remediable defect or led to safeguards against harm, none of the metaphysical calculations involved in a wrongful birth analysis are necessary. In such a case life is caused by the drug, not the negligence. The harm complained of is not life, but suffering by a living person, flowing from negligent conduct toward a potential life. These are familiar concepts, and do not require comparisons between life-with-injury and no-life — unless the defendants are permitted to introduce questions of life and death under the rule adopted by the majority.
Wilkins, J.,
(with whom Liacos and Abrams, JJ., join, dissenting as to the answer to question one).
In giving a negative answer to the first certified question, and thus barring any plaintiff who did not sustain a physical injury from recovering for emotional distress caused by one or more defendants, the majority of the court has failed to give adequate recognition to the factual circumstances lying behind that question. Perhaps the majority has been restrained by the form of the question, which adverts only to emotional distress resulting from “an increased statistical likelihood the plaintiff will suffer serious disease in the future.” In my view, the question should be answered by recognizing certain allegations of the complaint summarized by the District Court judge. It is said that many plaintiffs are anxious and emotionally upset by the possibility that they will suffer one of several abnormalities of their reproductive organs or will contract clear-cell adenocarcinoma, which conditions they are more likely to develop than the general population. On the advice of physicians, some plaintiffs are submitting to periodic medical examinations so as to permit early detection of problems. These examinations may be expensive and traumatic.
I think it is significant that accepted medical practice calls for the conducting of periodic examinations of at least *579certain of the plaintiffs. A negative answer to question one improperly relieves from liability a defendant who negligently caused a plaintiff’s emotional distress and created a situation in which expensive and traumatic examinations should be conducted. The plaintiffs’ concerns are not fanciful. Interference with the plaintiffs’ lives is medically indicated. These circumstances present, in the words of the majority, although they do not perceive it, an “objective corroboration of the emotional distress alleged.” Supra at 547.
The reasoning that has supported the view that negligently caused emotional distress, without bodily harm, does not warrant recovery against a person who negligently caused that distress has relied on three assumptions. (See Restatement [Second] of Torts § 436A, Comment b [1965]): (1) emotional distress which does not manifest itself physically is normally trivial; (2) physical harm guarantees the genuineness of the claim; and (3) the defendant’s fault (i.e., its negligence) is not so great as to require making good a purely mental disturbance.
As to the triviality of emotional distress which has no physical manifestation, it seems reasonably clear that much emotional distress is trivial, and the law should ignore it, standing alone. However, when there has been physical injury, we allow recovery for emotional distress, even minor emotional distress (see Barney v. Magenis, 241 Mass. 268, 273 [1922]) and even emotional distress unrelated to the physical injury (see Homans v. Boston Elevated Ry., 180 Mass. 456, 458 [1902]). More significantly, emotional distress is not always trivial. It may be founded on concerns reasonably, perhaps universally, expressed by medical science. It may arise from the anxiety of submitting to and awaiting the results of medical examinations and tests. It may be the product of a reasonable concern about one’s increased prospect of contracting a fatal disease, which may be treatable only by radical surgery or radiation. It may be the result of concern over the expenses, reasonably to be incurred, in submitting to medical examinations. While, on *580the facts given to us, I cannot declare with certainty that each plaintiff considered in question one may recover for the consequences of her emotional distress, it appears that at least some of the plaintiffs may be able to demonstrate emotional distress of more than a trivial nature.
On the assertion that physical harm guarantees the genuineness of the claim, we have rejected the possibility of fraudulent or deceptive claims as a basis for denying all claims of a particular character. See Dziokonski v. Babi-neau, 375 Mass. 555, 566 (1978), and cases cited. We have consistently stated in recent years, at least until the answer given by the majority to question one in this case, that the question of fraudulent or phoney claims is one to be resolved by the adversary process. Id. The majority backs away from our recent pronouncements granting to triers of fact the role of sifting real from contrived claims. The majority worries not only about deception but also about “tricks that the human mind can play upon itself.” Supra at 547. These are jury questions. Surely, it is not a deception or trick of the human mind, on the facts certified to us, that, as a result of the defendant’s negligence, some of the plaintiffs’ mothers consumed drugs manufactured by one or more of the defendants and that the plaintiffs are emotionally distressed because of the threat of medical problems, clearly recognized by medical science and calling for periodic, expensive, and traumatic examinations. We accept the majority’s view that actionable emotional distress, in the absence of physical injury, must be based on a reasonable response.1 But surely, at least as to certain plaintiffs (and perhaps all), the facts warrant submission of the genuineness and reasonableness of their emotional distress to the trier of fact.
The intentional or reckless and outrageous conduct of a defendant does not, as the majority suggests {supra at 547), provide any indicia of the genuineness of a plaintiff’s emo*581tional distress. The degree of the defendant’s fault bears no relation to the genuineness of a claim for damages based on negligently caused emotional distress. Intentional or reckless infliction of emotional distress warrants recovery because of the defendant’s extreme behavior. This all has to do only with the third reason given in the Restatement of Torts (Second) § 436A, Comment b, for denying recovery for negligently caused emotional distress — the degree of fault. Where the defendant’s conduct is outrageous and either intentional or reckless as to the plaintiff, we have permitted recovery for emotional distress caused by the defendant’s conduct. See Simon v. Solomon, 385 Mass. 91, 95 (1982), and cases cited. Where, as here, the defendant’s conduct is only negligent conduct, the justification for tort recovery for emotional distress is, of course, not as strong. However, even where the claim is founded on only negligence, the level and reasonableness of the emotional distress must be assessed. In the case before us, we are not in fact dealing with “mere” emotional distress. We are involved with circumstances in which good medical practice requires interference with the normal life of at least some plaintiffs. The time devoted to medical tests affects the plaintiff’s earning power, and the expense of the testing affects their pocketbooks. None of this can be imaginary or the product of deception. It is not trivial. We are not dealing with “only bad manners or mere hurt feelings” and to say that the distress of all the plaintiffs is “temporary or slight” is just plain wrong (see supra at 555). In this case, I believe a defendant may be liable for the consequences of its negligence without proof of physical injury.
The fact that most jurisdictions would not allow recovery in such a situation, if it is true, should not inhibit the development of the tort law of this Commonwealth. The inertia which results from reliance on a “majority view” guarantees a glacial development of the law.

Here I reiterate, of course, that the plaintiffs must prove physical injury induced by the emotional suffering caused by the defendants’ negligence, in accordance with the majority’s answer to question one, a view not shared by Justices Wilkins, Liacos and Abrams.

 We reject, however, the statement {supra at 555) that the reasonableness of a plaintiff’s response is closely related to the reasonable foreseeability of the emotional injury.