Court Opinion

ID: 9861025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:39:31.471505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:27:06.144408
License: Public Domain

BECK, J.,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree with so much of the majority’s well-reasoned Opinion as decides the questions of informed consent and punitive damages. I must dissent, however, from the majority’s determination of the issue of intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Although the Pennsylvania courts have not expressly adopted a cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress, case law indicates when and if Pennsylvania adopts the cause of action, recovery would require the plaintiff to allege facts sufficient to make out the elements set forth in the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 46. See Kazatsky v. King. David Memorial Park, 516 Pa. 183, 527 A.2d 988 (1987).
In the instant case, the majority correctly finds that subsection 2 of Restatement § 46 is applicable:
(2) Where such [extreme and outrageous] conduct is directed at a third person, the actor is subject to liability if he intentionally or recklessly causes severe emotional distress
(a) to a member of such person’s immediate family who is present at the time whether or not such distress results in bodily harm....
(Emphasis added). Although mother of the decedent Margaret Taylor was present in the hospital waiting room while the surgeons worked on her daughter, she did not learn of the alleged outrageous conduct, i.e., that Dr. Trinkaus performed the catheterization contrary to his representation that Dr. Wer-theimer would do so, until after the fateful events had taken place. She was not present in the room where the procedure took place, she was not a witness to Dr. Trinkaus’s conduct, and this small detail has always been cited as a required element in cases involving family members seeking recovery under Restatement section 46(2). Baker v. Morjon, Inc., 393 Pa.Super. 409, 574 A.2d 676, 679 (1990); Daughen v. Fox, 372 Pa.Super. 405, 539 A.2d 858, 861 n. 2 (1988).
The rationale for the requirement of presence has been explained in cases discussing the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress:
“[T]he relative who contemporaneously observes the tortious conduct has no time to brace his or her emotional system. The negligent tortfeasor inflicts upon this bystander an injury to the victim. Hence the critical element for establishing such liability is the contemporaneous observance of the injury to the close relative.”
Krysmalski v. Tarasovich, 424 Pa.Super. 121, 622 A.2d 298, 304 (1993) (quoting from Mazzagatti v. Everingham, 512 Pa. 266, 279, 516 A.2d 672, 679 (1986)). See also Bloom v. Dubois Regional Med. Center, 409 Pa.Super. 83, 597 A.2d 671, 682 (1991) (to recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress, plaintiff must observe defendant traumatically inflicting harm on plaintiffs relative with no buffer of time or space to soften the blow).1
*1041I do not read Johnson v. Caparelli, 425 Pa.Super. 404, 625 A.2d 668 (1993), as allowing recovery by Margaret Taylor under these facts. Indeed, in Johnson, the majority held that the parents of a victim of sexual abuse perpetrated by the defendant could not recover damages for emotional distress under section 46(2) because they were not present at the time the outrageous conduct directed at their son actually took place. I therefore cannot join in the majority’s decision on this issue.

. Comment L to Restatement section 46 further discusses the requirement of presence:
The cases thus far decided, however, have limited such liability to plaintiffs who were pres*1041ent at the time, as distinguished from those who discover later what has occurred. The limitation may be justified by the practical necessity of drawing the line somewhere, since the number of persons who may suffer emotional distress at the news of an assassination of the President is virtually unlimited, and the distress of a woman who is informed of her husband’s murder ten years afterward may lack the guarantee of genuineness which her presence on the spot would afford. The Caveat is intended, however, to leave open the possibility of situations in which presence at the time may not be required.