Court Opinion

ID: 9702149
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:56:45.369969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:34.074898
License: Public Domain

Markell, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion, in which Delaplaine, J., concurred.
The question presented in this case is whether a mother can recover for nervous and mental injury caused by shock and fright from seeing her two children struck and killed before her eyes by an automobile negligently driven by defendants, while the mother was standing on the porch in front of her house, the children were standing across the street on a sidewalk or parkway, and the automobile jumped a curb and struck, tossed and killed them. As defendants might prefer to state the question, it is whether in the circumstances defendants owed any duty (apart from Lord Campbell’s Act) to the mother not to injure her by shock and fright by negligently operating their automobile so as to put her in fear for the safety of her children, though not for her own safety.
One of the minimum practical advantages of the doctrine stare decisis is that, when it is practised, it puts an end to otherwise endless debate on a question of ideal abstract justice on which ideal justice — or universal opinion — is unattainable and it is more important that the question be settled than that it be settled right, In recent cases, not all strictly within the doctrine, but within its fringes, this court has reached different results on different questions, in one case with difference of opinion among the judges. Mahnke v. Moore, 197 Md. 61, 77 A. 2d 923; State, use of Joyce v. Hatfield, 197 Md. 249, 78 A. 2d 754; Damasiewicz v. Gorsuch, 197 Md. 417, 79 A. 2d 550; State, use of Aronoff v. Baltimore Transit Co., 197 Md. 528, 80 A. 2d 13.
In 1888 in a case from Australia it was held, by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, that damages for a nervous shock or mental injury, caused by fright *489at an impending collision ( which in fact was narrowly escaped), are too remote to be recovered. Victorian Railways Commissioners v. Coultas, 13 A. C. 222. This case was followed in New York in 1896 and in Massachusetts in 1897. Mitchell v. Rochester Railway Co., 151 N. Y. 107, 45 N. E. 354, 34 L. R. A. 781; Spade v. Lynn and Boston Railroad Co., 168 Mass. 285, 47 N. E. 88, 38 L. R. A. 512. Meanwhile it was strongly disapproved in Ireland and in some states in this country, and by Sir Frederick Pollock and other eminent jurists, and later by the courts in England and Scotland. In the Coultas case and the New York and Massachusetts cases, there was little discussion of abstract law or justice. These decisions were based squarely on the public policy of avoiding a flood of fictitious litigation. About a year ago we said, “At the beginning of this century, the numerical weight of authority in this country supported the rule that a plaintiff cannot recover for nervous affections unaccompanied by contemporaneous physical injury.” Mahnke v. Moore, supra, 77 A. 2d 926. Apparently in New York and Massachusetts this is still the law, but in practice has narrow scope, since exception from it of nervous or mental shock which directly causes physical injury, e.g., fainting and consequent falls therefrom. Cohn v. Ansonia Realty Co., 162 App. Div. 791, 148 N. Y. S. 39; Comstock v. Wilson, 257 N. Y. 231, 177 N. E. 431, 76 A. L. R. 676 (both cited in Bowman v. Williams, 164 Md. 397, 404, 165 A. 182, infra) ; Wagner v. International Railway Co., 232 N. Y. 176, 133 N. E. 437, 19 A. L. R. 1, (cited by Lord Wright in Hay v. Young, [1943] A. C. 92, 108). Immediately after the sentence just quoted we said, “In 1909, however, this Court adopted the rule that where the wrongful act complained of is the proximate cause of the injury and the injury ought to have been contemplated in the light of all the circumstances as a natural and probable cause thereof, the case should be left to the jury. Green v. T. A. Shoemaker & Co., 111 Md. 69, 81, 73 A. 688, 23 L. R. A., N. S., 667.” Mahnke v. Moore, supra, 77 A. 2d *490926-927. It will be noted (a) that this statement of Maryland law since 1909 is more than could be said of New York or Massachusetts law, and (6) that what is said of contemplation of the natural and probable consequences of the wrongful act (italicized in a quotation of this sentence in State use of Aronoff v. Baltimore Transit Co., supra, 80 A. 2d 13, 14) is applicable (as it usually is) to either the question of proximate cause or the question of the duty to the plaintiff which makes the act wrongful as to the plaintiff.
In Dulieu v. White, [1901] 2 K. B. 669, before a Divisional Court consisting of Kennedy and Phillimore, JJ., it was held that damages which result from a nervous shock occasioned by fright unaccompanied by any actual impact may be recoverable in an action for negligence if physical injury has been caused to the plaintiff. The physical injury in the case was a miscarriage and other illness. In so holding each judge in his separate opinion reviewed and disapproved the Coultas case and the New York and Massachusetts cases above mentioned. Mr. Justice Kennedy in his opinion also uttered a dictum, which directly and indirectly is the basis of defendants’ contentions in the instant case, “It is not, however, to be taken that in my view every nervous shock occasioned by negligence and producing physical injury to the sufferer gives a cause of action. There is, I am inclined to think, as least one limitation. The shock, where it operates through the mind, must be a shock which arises from a reasonable fear of immediate personal injury to himself. A has, I conceive, no legal duty not to shock B’s nerves by the exhibition of negligence towards C, or towards the property of B or C. * * * In order to illustrate my meaning in the concrete, I say that I should not be prepared in the present case to hold that the plaintiff was entitled to maintain this action if the nervous shock was produced, not by the fear of bodily injury to herself, but by horror or vexation arising from the sight of mischief being threatened or done either to some other person, or to her own or her husband’s property, *491by the intrusion of the defendants’ van and horses.” [1901] 2 K. B. 675, 676. Mr. Justice Phillimore expressed no opinion on this point.
In Coyle v. Watson, [1915] A. C. 1, 13, in the House of Lords, Lord Shaw said the Coultas case could “no longer be treated as a decision of guiding authority”. In this respect the law in England had reached a point in 1915 which had been reached in Maryland in 1909. Green v. Shoemaker, supra.
Hambrook v. Stokes Bros., [1925] 1 K. B. 141, was a suit under Lord Campbell’s Act for death of the plaintiff’s wife from a miscarriage and attendant illness caused by fright, not for her own safety but for the safety of her children, by a runaway truck on a public highway. A majority of the court (Bankes, L. J., and Atkin, L. J.) held that the action could be maintained and disapproved the dictum of Kennedy, J., in Dulieu v. White, supra. Lord Justice Sargant, dissenting, followed the dictum of Kennedy, J., and held the action could not be maintained. Lord Justice Bankes narrowed and summarized his opinion by saying, “* * * in my opinion the plaintiff would establish a cause of action if he proved to the satisfaction of the jury all the material facts on which he relies— namely, that the death of his wife resulted from the shock occasioned by the running away of the lorry, that the shock resulted from what the plaintiff’s wife either saw or realized by her own unaided senses, and not from something which some one told her, and that the shock was due to a reasonable fear of immediate personal injury either to herself or to her children.” [1925] 1 K. B. 152. It will be noted that this carefully chosen language would sustain liability in the instant case and denial of liability in Cote v. Litawa, 96 N. H. 174, 71 A. 2d 792, 18 A. L. R. 2d 216, cited in State use of Aronoff v. Baltimore Transit Co., supra.
In Bowman v. Williams, 164 Md. 397, 165 A. 182, the plaintiff recovered damages for nervous shock, without any physical impact, from fright for the safety of his young sons, caused by the defendant’s truck, which came *492down an icy hill, got out of control, crossed the curb and sidewalk and crashed into the foundation of the plaintiff’s house, thrust itself into the basement and remained there embedded in the side of the house. The plaintiff’s sons had been in the basement, the plaintiff was standing in the dining room, above the basement. The judgment for the plaintiff was affirmed, in an exhaustive opinion by Judge Parke, which fully covered the case on principle and on authority. The opinion says that “the plaintiff * * * had visible reason to apprehend that the impending peril * * * would * * * inflict the threatened physical injury upon his children in the basement and himself in the dining room * * *. There was no basis to differentiate the fear caused the plaintiff for himself and for his children, because there is no possibility of division of an emotion which was instantly evoked by the common and simultaneous danger of the three.” 164 Md. 403, 165 A. 184. Manifestly the danger of physical injury to the plaintiff himself was not great, and there is no indication that fear of injury to himself was an appreciable factor.
In the course of the opinion in Bowman v. Williams this court said [164 Md. 401, 165 A. 183], “When fear exists, the nervous and physical reactions, although probably differing in degree, are fundamentally identical, whether the fear is purely subjective, as when it is for the victim’s own safety, or is objective, as when the fear is for the victim’s wife, child, relative, friend, or even a stranger. * * * These familiar illustrations demonstrate that, the effect of fright being impredicable, there is neither logic nor reason to hold, with some of the cases, that a distinction is to be taken, so that, if a party suffer an injury, as loss of health, of mind, or of life, through fear of safety for self, a recovery may be had for the negligent act of another; but may not recover under similar circumstances, if the fear be of safety for another. * * * There is, therefore, on principle and weight of argument, no reason to deny to the plaintiff a right to recover in this action, because of the fact that the injury *493might have arisen from fear for the safety of the plaintiffs children rather than for his own. * * * In the last-cited case [Hambrook v. Stokes Bros.] Atkin, L. J., in reviewing the cases, said: ‘I can find no principle to support the self-imposed restriction stated in the judgment of Kennedy, J., in Dulieu v. White & Sons that the shock must be a shock which arises from a reasonable fear of immediate personal injury to oneself. It appears to me to be inconsistent with the decision in Pugh v. London, Brighton & South Coast Ry. Co. and with the decision in Wilkinson v. Downton, in neither of which cases was the shock the result of the apprehension of the injury to the plaintiff. It would result in a state of the law in which a mother shocked by fright for herself would recover, while a mother shocked by her child being killed before her eyes could not, and in which a mother traversing the highway could recover if shocked by fright for herself, while if she could be cross-examined into an admission that the fright was really for her child she could not. In my opinion such distinctions would be discreditable to any system of jurisprudence in which they formed part.’ Dulieu v. White & Sons (1901) 2 K. B. 669; Pugh v. London etc. Ry. Co. (1896), 2 Q. B. 248; Wilkinson v. Downton (1897) 2 Q. B. 57. The instant case does not require the doctrine to be extended so far as is indicated by the opinion quoted, and this decision is confined to the facts of the record at bar, which present a somewhat different situation. * * * In Maryland the decision in Green v. T. A. Shoemaker & Co., 111 Md. 69, 76-83, 73 A. 688, and followed in Balto. & O. R. Co. v. Harris, 121 Md. 254, 268-270, 88 A. 282; Patapsco Loan Co. v. Hobbs, 129 Md. 9, 16, 98 A. 239, and Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Roch, 160 Md. 189, 192, 153 A. 22, have settled the principle that a plaintiff can sustain an action for damages for nervous shock or injury caused, without physical impact, by fright arising directly from defendant’s negligent act or omission, and resulting in some clearly apparent and substantial physical injury, as manifested *494by an external condition or by symptons clearly indicative of a resultant pathological, physiological, or mental state. In these opinions, this court has fully stated and justified its position, which is in harmony with the modern trend of decision. [Citing the Law Quarterly Review, Bohlen and many cases.] It follows from a consideration of the Maryland decisions and their application to this record that there was legally sufficient evidence for the case to go to the jury, and the court committed no error in rejecting the defendants’ first prayer. The fifth prayer of the defendants proceeded upon the theory that the testimony raised an issue of fact whether or not the father’s nervous injury was due to fear for self or for his two children, and the court’s action in rejecting this prayer was sound. In the first place, there was no legally sufficient evidence to support the submission of such an issue; and, secondly, the prayer was objectionable on the ground that, under the circumstances shown by the record, the father could have recovered whether this fright was for the safety of his children or of both himself and the children.”
Counsel has presented an able argument, based on the distinction between the question of proximate cause and the question of existence of a duty from defendant to plaintiff, against the authority of Bowman v. Williams, as a precedent for the plaintiff in the instant case, and specifically against the quotation of the opinion of Atkin, L. J., as a rejection by this court of the dictum of Kennedy, J. It is not necessary to pursue this argument into its details. There is a difference between the question of proximate cause and the question of duty, but not as great a difference as defendant argues. That the element of foreseeability has not the same, but a similar place in each question, has been recognized by this court as recently as Mahnke v. Moore, supra, and State use of Aronoff v. Baltimore Transit Co., supra, and as long ago as Green v. Shoemaker, supra. Lord Justice Sargant, whose dissenting opinion seems to be defendant’s principal reliance, in that opinion said, *495referring to an unreported case, “That decision seems to me unquestionably right, though I should prefer, with Kennedy, J., to put it not on the ground that the harm was too remote a consequence of the negligence, but on (what is often practically equivalent) a consideration of the extent of the duty of the defendant towards the plaintiff and others on and near the highway.” Hambrook v. Stokes Bros., supra, pages 162-163.
It may be that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but ordinarily it is more important (because more feasible) for a court to maintain a semblance of consistency among its own decisions than to strain after ideal justice. Twenty years ago this court held a food store liable to a customer for causing shock, through a negligent “mistake” the court said that if the “mistake” was an intentional practical joke, as the evidence strongly indicated, the proprietor would not have been liable), by exposing her to a view of the dead body of a rat. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Rock, 160 Md. 189, 153 A. 22. Can the same court now hold that the owner or driver of an automobile owes no duty to a mother of children on a public highway to refrain from shocking her by negligently hurling them into eternity before her eyes? Can it now say that in Bowman v. Williams the result would have been different if the plaintiff had expressly testified that he had no fear for his own safety and the children had been on the sidewalk across the street instead of in the house? Lord Atkin, in the passage quoted in Bowman v. Williams pointed out the incongruity of allowing recovery to a mother who feared only for herself and denying it to one who feared for her children.
In respect of the dictum of Kennedy, J., counsel stresses the reservation in the opinion of this court after the quotation from Hambrook v. Stokes Bros., and emphasizes (I think over emphasizes) certain references to the pleadings in that case. Reservation of opinion on unnecessary questions (“assuming without deciding”) is a part of judicial prudence. But courts cannot *496foretell the "consequences of their own decisions or reservations. The logic of judicial action may carry a decision further than was expected, and may sweep aside reservations. Hambrook v. Stokes Bros., was the only case quoted in Bowman v. Williams. The only point on which it was quoted was the rejection by Atkin, L. J., of the dictum of Kennedy, J. The opinion of this" codrt contained statements by this court which were more at variance with the dictum of Kennedy, J. than was the quotation from Atkin, L. J. Supra. After Judge Parke had already expressed (in effect) this court’s disapproval of the dictum, it is beyond permissible construction to' say that he meant, in quoting the disapproval by Atkin, E. J., of the dictum, "to approve" the dictum and disapprove the quoted disapproval of it.
Inimediatély after the two sentences above quoted from Mahnke v. Moore, supra, we said [197 Md. 69, 77 A. 2d 927], “The law is now established in Maryland, in accordance with the modern trend o"f the decisions, that ‘a pláintiff can sustain an action for damages for nervous shock or injury caused without physical impact, by fright arising directly from defendant’s negligent act or omission, and resulting in some clearly apparent and substantial physical injury as manifested by an external condition or by" symptoms clearly indicative of a resultant pathological, "physiological, or mental state.’ Bowman v. Williams, 164 Md. 397, 404, 165 A. 182, 184.” It is said that Mahnke v. Moore "is distinguishable from Bowman " v, Williams and from the "instant case, in that it was a case of wilful, not negligent, wrong. We might have iriade such distinction, but we preferred (properly I think) to put our decision on the basis of Bowman v. Williams. It may be questioned whether the murder ánd suicide committed by the frantic father in the presence of his four-year-old child was any more a wilful wrong against the child than “homicide by automobile” committed by feckless drivers' on the highway (and unláwfully" on the sidewalk)', who give no thought for the life'or limb of children of nerves of affections of mothers, *497is a wilful wrong. I think the instant case is governed by Bowman v. Williams and Mahnke v. Moore and the earlier cases (from 1909 down) reviewed in Bowman v. Williams.
In State, use of Aronoff v. Baltimore Transit Co., supra, we held that there could be no recovery for death caused by shock from fear at injury to decedent’s property. The opinion fully reviews the pertinent authorities. It need not be quoted, but it may be noted (a) that the opinion quoted Bowman v. Williams (principally parts quoted above) and cited Hambrook v. Stokes Bros. with apparent approval, and did not quote or cite (b) the dictum of Kennedy, J. or (c) Waube v. Warrington, 216 Wisc. 603, 258 N. W. 497, 98 A. L. R. 394, which had been cited to us by counsel and is now relied on by defendant. The dictum of Kennedy, J. and the Wisconsin case are not consistent with our own decisions in Bowman v. Williams and Mahnke v. Moore. The dictum■ of Kennedy, J., if it were Maryland law, would have decided both the Aronoff case and the instant case for the defendants.
In Hay v. Young, [1943] A. C. 92, the House of Lords, five Law Lords sitting, unanimously held that there could be no recovery for shock at the death of a total stranger by collision with an automobile on a public street. The Lords reserved opinion on the question in Hambrook v. Stokes Bros. Two of the five expressed a tentative preference, “as now advised”, for the majority opinions, and a third was not prepared to accept the dictum of Kennedy, J. “as a conclusive test in all cases”. One Lord expressed a similar tentative preference for the minority opinion of Sargant, L. J. It would be presumptuous to venture to predict the future disposition of a question on which the House of Lords has reserved opinion. It may be permissible to observe that there is no numerical indication that the dictum of Kennedy, J., is likely to be resurrected.
In this tedious superficial review of authorities I have hot attempted to go beneath the surface and discuss *498the basic questions of principle which have been debated by judges and and jurists for sixty years. The purpose has been solely “from a consideration of the Maryland decisions” and their application to the instant case, to ascertain whether the Maryland decisions furnish the answer to the question in the instant case. I think that they do, and that Bowman v. Williams and Mahnke v. Moore are conclusive.
This is the third case of injury by shock which we have decided in a little more than a year. The other two were unanimous decisions, participated in by all the present members of this court. On the question of proximate cause — or existence of a duty — Mahnke v. Moore was not decided without consciousness of possibilities of abuse in such cases — e. g., possible attempts to “redistribute wealth” as between children and illegitimate children. We were satisfied that that case was governed by Bowman v. Williams. This case is governed by Bowman v. Williams and Mahnke v. Moore.
Judge Delaplaine authorizes me to say that he concurs in this opinion.