Court Opinion

ID: 9534073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:36:40.920775+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:29:24.996855
License: Public Domain

FRIEDLANDER, Judge,
dissenting.
I believe summary judgment was appropriate and therefore respectfully dissent.
The parties agree that the question upon which this case turns is whether Ross suffered a “direct impact” within the meaning of Indiana’s modified impact rule, as set forth in Shuamber v. Henderson, 579 N.E.2d 452 (Ind.1991). The reversal of summary judgment in the instant case means that the jury is entitled to decide that the touching of a house in which a person is located is a direct impact within the meaning of Shuamber, even if the person does not feel the touching, but merely sees and hears it. The majority today decides that the law would countenance such a result. I believe this decision effects an unwarranted expansion of the modified impact rule announced in Shuam-ber.
Prior to Shuamber, Indiana law recognized the impact rule, under which a person could recover damages for emotional distress only if me emotional,distress arose out of a physical injury. In Shuamber, the supreme court *441modified-that rule to the effect that a person could recover for emotional distress even if he did not suffer a physical injury, so long as the emotional distress was suffered as a result of a direct impact. The court concluded in that case that the plaintiff was entitled to recover because the car that the plaintiff was driving was struck by another vehicle. The impact with the plaintiffs ear was severe enough to have killed the plaintiffs son, who was a passenger in the ear. It is in the context of those facts that we are to interpret the meaning of “direct impact”.
Webster’s Third International Dictionary 640 (1976) defines “direct” as “effected by one subject or substance in contact with another with no insulating or obstructing element between”. The key concept that characterizes “direct” in this context is embodied in the phrase “in contact with”. The Shuam-ber plaintiff was in contact with the ear which was struck by the defendant’s vehicle. Therefore, the impact in Shuamber was “direct” enough to have physically jostled the plaintiff, at the very least. Indeed, one may well imagine that the effect of the impact in question upon the plaintiffs body was considerably more than a jostling.
Contrast this with the effect of the offending conduct upon the plaintiffs body in the instant ease. Ross heard and observed the offending conduct, but could not feel it. She was not in contact with the door when it was struck. To justify imposition of the rule by saying that she was in contact with the house — by standing on its floor — is to stretch the point too far. The blows to the door and door handle did not reverberate to or visit physical consequences upon Ross’s body that she could feel. The question thus becomes, does hearing and observing, but not feeling, an act constitute a “direct impact” within the meaning of Shuamber? In my view, it does not.
Shuamber did not alter the “impact” component of the impact rule. See Gorman v. I & M Elec. Co., Inc., 641 N.E.2d 1288 (Ind.Ct.App.1994), trans. denied. Rather, it abolished the requirement that the source of compensable emotional distress must be a physical injury to the plaintiff. However, the requirement of an impact upon the plaintiff survived unaltered by the modification of the rule. Id. As I read the cases both before and after Shuamber, and including Shuamber, it is clear to me that the impact must be, in relation to the plaintiff, both direct and physical. See, e.g., Gorman v. I & M Elec. Co., Inc., 641 N.E.2d 1288.
In this regard,'I note that the supreme court held that Schuamber satisfied the first element because the plaintiff there sustained a “physical impact”, 579 N.E.2d at 454 (emphasis supplied). Surely, “physical impact” in this context cannot be interpreted so broadly as to include within its meaning the touching of a building in which the plaintiff is situated, when neither the plaintiff nor any other person feels any physical effects as a result of the touching. Rather, there must be a direct nexus between the defendant’s act and the plaintiffs body that goes beyond the plaintiff merely seeing or hearing an impact that is otherwise physically unconnected to the plaintiff. In my view, the “direct impact” required by the modified impact rule must be such as to produce an effect upon the plaintiffs body that the plaintiff is capable of detecting other than through the senses of vision, hearing or smelling.
In summary, I believe that knocking, however loudly, upon a door of a house.occupied by a person who cannot feel the blows is not a “direct impact” within the meaning of Indiana’s modified impact rule. The majority’s holding is an extension of the modified impact rule announced in Shuamber that is not supported, or even suggested, by the text of that opinion. I would affirm the grant of summary judgment.