Court Opinion

ID: 9670868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:27:29.486813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:06.903305
License: Public Domain

HEFFERNAN, CHIEF JUSTICE
(concurring). While I agree with the result of the majority opinion, I cannot agree with its efforts to distinguish this case from Waube v. Warrington, 216 Wis. 603, 258 N.W. 497 (1935), and then to characterize the instant situation as an exception to the “zone of danger” analysis.
The “zone of danger” theory has no place in modern Wisconsin negligence law. It is absolutely clear that, in a situation such as that at issue here, where there is negligence, cause in fact (substantial factor), proximate cause, and injury, there is liability. “Zone of danger,” as a part of that analysis, falls out because, where there is a negligent act, there is liability in respect to anyone who is in fact injured by the negligence. The cut-off for liability is to be examined not in an artificial way, such as saying that there can be no liability for one out of the “zone of danger,” because, in the event a plaintiff is injured in any way, that plaintiff is. in fact within the “zone of danger.”
Under the proximate cause analysis of Osborne v. Montgomery, 203 Wis. 223, 234 N.W. 372 (1931), however, the fact one is either within or without the “zone of danger” does not dictate liability if there is cause in fact and proximate cause.
Proximate cause, however, subsumes the policy question, to be decided by the court, of whether liability follows from negligence, cause in fact (substantial factor), and injury.
*240In the instant case, we should discard the outworn and anomalous “zone of danger” analysis and instead apply the policy factors included in proximate cause to determine whether the sister of the injured young man may recover if the other predicates of liability are satisfied.
This should be treated as a mine run case: Was there negligence? Did it in fact cause the injury, and is it reasonable to impose liability in view of the particular facts of the case ? This does not require a “zone of danger” analysis. It does require the specific overruling of Waube.
I would also adopt the position taken in the dissenting opinion of Justice Wilkie in Ver Hagen v. Gibbons, 47 Wis. 2d 220, 177 N.W.2d 83 (1970). That dissent, joined in by Chief Justice Hallows and the author of this concurrence, urged that emotional distress resulting from negligent conduct should be compensible “regardless of whether this emotional distress was subsequently physically manifested.” Ver Hagen dissent, at 228. Whether there is in fact emotional injury or compensible distress is a matter of proof under normal evidentiary principles. It is not at all related to the illusory problem of Waube. I would specifically overrule Waube.1
By abolishing the notion that only a person within the “zone of danger” ought to be compensated for emotional distress and then only if there are “physical manifestations” of that distress, some consistency and rationality can inure to this phase of our negligence law.
*241If there is the requisite sequence of negligence, causation, and damages — whether physical, emotional, or both —there ordinarily should be liability.
If one is injured physically or emotionally, it is irrelevant whether that person is within a court’s hypothetical boundary lines of a fancied “zone of danger,” whether the plaintiff feared for his or her own safety, or whether any emotional inj ury was accompanied by, or resulted in, a manifestation of physical injury. The question is factual. It is for the jury to decide whether injury, physical or emotional, has been proved and was caused by the defendant’s negligence.
I would also purge our tort law of the bizarre, egoistic notion that emotional distress is compensable only if occasioned by fear for one’s own safety. See slip opinion at 231.
The doctrine that one can suffer emotional distress only when within the “zone of danger” is based on the idea that one can only be emotionally distressed as the result of fear for one’s own safety. Klassa v. Milwaukee Gas Light Co., 273 Wis. 176, 77 N.W.2d 397 (1956). Yet, a number of our opinions deal with the distress caused as the result of the hazard, injury, or death of someone other than the plaintiff. It is clear from our own cases that the basic rationale of the “zone of danger” —fear for the plaintiff’s own safety — is largely irrelevant to the claims that have arisen and alien to the characteristics of normal human beings. In Waube, the mother, who died of grief after witnessing the death of her child killed by the negligence of the defendant, was never in an area where there was any danger of injury to her. There was no claim of any emotional damage to Mrs. Waube because of her fear for her own safety. Yet, the fact of emotional damage to the mother was not seriously challenged in Waube except on totally artificial grounds, i.e., “zone of danger” and “physically manifested injury.”
*242It is beyond the realm of reason and experience to conclude that emotional distress cannot, as a matter of law, result unless there is danger of physical impact to the plaintiff or there is a physical manifestation of the emotional distress. Whether, liability should ensue once the chain of negligence and causation is established is a policy decision for application by the court in each individual case. Morgan v. Pennsylvania General Ins. Co., 87 Wis. 2d 723, 737, 275 N.W.2d 660 (1979); Coffey v. Milwaukee, 74 Wis. 2d 526, 537, 540-43, 247 N.W.2d 132 (1976); Hass v. Chicago & North Western Ry. Co., 48 Wis. 2d 321, 326-27, 179 N.W.2d 885 (1970).2 It should not be determined by artificial rules mouthing meaningless formulations divorced from reality, such as “zone of danger” and “physical manifestation of injury.” As was stated over fifty years ago in Osborne v. Montgomery, 203 Wis. 223, 234 N.W. 372 (1931):
“Any rule which operates to limit liability for a wrongful act must be derived from judicial policy and its limits cannot be defined by any formula capable of automatic application but must rest in the sound discretion of the court.” Id. at 237.
It is time we dispense with the automatic and irrational application of the liability limiting formulations that the majority attempts to distinguish but at the same time fervently embraces.
1 concur in the result.
*243Justices Shirley S. Abrahamson and William A. Bablitoh join in this concurrence.

 The holding of Waube is based on the application of the majority rationale in Palsgraf v. Long Island R. R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99. Waube, at 614. That rationale has been repudiated on numerous occasions by this court. See, e.g., Coffey v. City of Milwaukee, 74 Wis. 2d 526, 537-38, 247 N.W.2d 132 (1976); Antoniewicz v. Reszczynski, 70 Wis. 2d 836, 857, 236 N.W.2d 1 (1975); Schilling v. Stoekel, 26 Wis. 2d 525, 531-32, 133 N.W.2d 335 (1965); and cases cited therein.

 I do not disagree with the nature of policy factors relied upon by the majority. However, those policy factors should be applied by the court, i.e., the judge, after there is a determination of liability — negligence, cause in fact, and injury. It is then, as an element of proximate cause, that the judge in an appropriate case may apply the policy factors as a liability limiting device to prevent an unjust result. See, Hass v. Chicago & North Western Ry. Co., supra at 326, and Colla v. Mandella, 1 Wis. 2d 594, 598-99, 85 N.W.2d 345 (1957).