Court Opinion

ID: 9670333
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:19:03.411957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:03.976395
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. The present controversy is uncommon because it involves the action of an intervening agency, ie., federal criminal authorities, which operated independently upon the defendants’ negligence, so as to work harm upon the plaintiff, Lawrence. Whatever significance this circumstance may have concerning whether defendants should be made hable for the harm that their negligence created, it does not provide a basis, once liability is assumed, for an unprincipled disallowance of certain elements of damage that the evidence reveals were sustained. In deciding the damage issues in the present case, the liability and causation issues must be considered most favorably toward Lawrence. I find it helpful to consider the majority’s position on recovery for emotional distress damages and recovery for loss of reputation in inverse order.
I. The Right to Recover Damages for Emotional Distress.
The majority elects to disallow any recovery by Lawrence for emotional distress because he did not sustain physical injury. This standard has been frequently resorted to by courts and is justified in the Restatement (Second) of Torts on the following grounds:
The reasons for the distinction, as they usually have been stated by the courts, have been three. One is that emotional disturbance which is not so severe and serious as to have physical consequences is normally in the realm of the trivial, and so falls within the maxim that the law does not concern itself with trifles. It is likely to be so temporary, so evanescent, and so relatively harmless and unimportant, that the task of compensating for it would unduly burden the courts and the defendants. The second is that in the absence of the guarantee of genuineness provided by resulting bodily harm, such emotional disturbance may be too easily feigned, depending, as it must, very largely on the subjective testimony of the plaintiff; and that to allow recovery for it might open too wide a door for false claimants who have suffered no real harm at all. The third is that *424where the defendant has been merely negligent, without any element of intent to do harm, his fault is not so great that he should be required to make good a purely mental disturbance.
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 436A emt. b (1965).
As suggested some time ago, however, by a leading authority in the field of tort law, courts ought not let this rule prevent them from reaching sensible and just results in situations in which the reasons for the general rule do not exist. Prosser on Torts § 328 (4th ed. 1971). As Dean Prosser observes:
[T]he difficulty [of proof] is not insuperable. Not only fright and shock, but other kinds of mental injury are marked by definite physical symptoms, which are capable of clear medical proof. It is entirely possible to allow recovery only upon satisfactory evidence and deny it when there is nothing to corroborate the claim, or to look for some guarantee of genuineness in the circumstances of the ease. The problem is one of proof, and it will not be necessary to deny a remedy in all cases because some claims may be false.

Id.

Consistent with Dean Prosser’s suggestion, this court has recognized the need to temper the general rule of nonliability in proper cases. Because errors in the transmission of telegrams on the subject of death and dying are very likely to cause emotional distress, but very unlikely to cause physical injury, recovery of damages for emotional distress has been allowed in such cases without proof of physical injury. Mentzer v. Western Union Tel. Co., 93 Iowa 752, 768-71, 62 N.W. 1, 5-6 (1895). In another situation, we have refused to apply the general rule limiting emotional distress damages when health care providers under an obligation to provide for their patients’ physical care act in a manner that would inevitably result in mental anguish. Oswald v. LeGrand, 453 N.W.2d 634, 639 (Iowa 1990). I submit that the facts of the present action are equally deserving of a departure from the general limitation on damages for emotional distress.
Lawyers are hired for the very purpose of assisting their clients in avoiding the harsh consequences, including emotional consequences, that frequently attend a failure to observe legal requirements. In the present case, the jury could have found that the defendant’s negligent actions in filling out bankruptcy schedules made it appear that the client had committed a serious federal crime. This in turn led to indictment, arrest and trial with the possibility of conviction and imprisonment — circumstances that by their very nature placed the client in a very stressful situation that continued over a lengthy period of time. The severe emotional impact that this would place on any normal person is neither trivial nor speculative. It would not, however, ordinarily produce a physical injury so as to be compensable under the general rule.
The present case meets both the “special relation of the actor” test applied in Oswald and the “unlikely occurrence of physical injury in connection with foreseeable emotional distress” test invoked in the Mentzer telegram case. The reasons for the general rule of nonliability advanced in section 436A of the Restatement do not fit the present controversy. The anxiety that would normally accompany the travail of being indicted, arrested, and tried for a serious federal crime is not in the realm of the trivial. A person subjected to those occurrences will not be subject to feigning emotional distress. These circumstances create a strong likelihood that such distress will occur and will exist throughout the entire period of the criminal proceeding. I submit that the defendants in the present case bore a relationship to Lawrence that should subject them to liability for foreseeable harms arising from events that it was their responsibility to prevent, albeit that those consequences were unintended. I would affirm the judgment of the district court allowing the emotional damages awarded in the verdict of the jury.
II. Recovery of Damages for Injury to Reputation.
The majority sustains a directed verdict in favor of defendants on Lawrence’s claim for damage to reputation on the theory that such damages are never recoverable in negligence actions. Lawrence sought recovery for loss *425of reputation as a separate item of damages distinct from other emotional distress. It is evident, however, from reading the authorities relied on by the majority that its decision denying those damages is based on the same reasoning it has utilized in denying damages for other emotional disturbance. In the absence of economic loss due to a damaged reputation, the injury thus sustained is emotional in nature based on embarrassment and loss of dignity. But, as was true with the other elements of emotional distress, such as anxiety and stress, the circumstantial evidence strongly corroborates Lawrence’s claim that he experienced emotional injury from damage to his reputation. I believe that these circumstances create a prima facie case for recovery of damages based on the resulting embarrassment and loss of dignity. I would reverse the judgment of the district court granting a directed verdict on that portion of Lawrence’s claim.
LAVORATO, J., joins in this dissent.