Court Opinion

ID: 9743425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:33:17.706357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:41.260043
License: Public Domain

BARTEAU, Judge,
dissenting.
I believe what remains of the impact rule, as modified in Shuamber, need not be construed so narrowly as it is in the majority opinion, and it should not preclude Wood from the opportunity to seek recovery for her emotional injuries. The trial court properly denied summary judgment to Moore-Langen, and I must dissent from our reversal of that decision.
As the majority correctly notes, Shuamber modified the “impact rule” so that the required impact need not cause physical injury to the plaintiff, and so that the emotional distress suffered by the plaintiff need not result from a physical injury caused by the impact. Instead, a plaintiff pursuing an action for emotional distress need only show that she has sustained a “direct impact by the negligence of another” and has suffered emotional trauma “by virtue of that direct involvement.” 579 N.E.2d at 456.
In modifying the impact rule, the Shuam-ber court shifted the focus away from the effect of the physical injuries the impact caused to the plaintiff, and toward the emotional distress that the plaintiff felt due to her “direct involvement” in’ an injury to someone else:
We are satisfied that these policy reasons [supporting the former impact rule] are no longer valid concerns in the context , of negligent infliction of emotional distress, and we perceive no reason to refrain from extending recovery for emotional distress to instances where the distress is the result of a physical injury inflicted on another.
Id. at 455. Our supreme court noted that only two states other than Indiana required that a plaintiff’s emotional distress arise from her physical injury, and that only three other states required any impact at all. Id. n. 1.
The majority reads into the Shuamber standard a limitation which cannot be found in the language of that standard and which is *494not required by the rationale underlying the modification of the impact rule in that decision.
Specifically, the majority would require not only direct impact — the “striking ... of one body against another” — but it apparently would further require that the impact be initiated by the tortfeasor. The Shuamber language does not explicitly impose any such requirement concerning the source of the impact. It will, obviously, be a rare situation where the impact is not initiated by the tortfeasor, but I believe we have just such a situation before us and we should allow Wood’s claim to go forward.
There can be no doubt that there was “impact” when Wood pounded on the side of the Moore-Langen truck in order to prevent it from running over Brittain with its rear. wheels. Nor can there be any doubt that Wood has alleged, as Shuamber requires, emotional trauma suffered by virtue of her “direct involvement” in Moore-Langen’s negligent conduct. In fact, her involvement was at least as “direct” as that of the Shuamber plaintiffs, who were merely present in a ear when it collided with another car, killing a family member.
The majority suggests, implicitly, that had Wood herself been struck, however minimally, by the Moore-Langen truck, she would have an action for the emotional distress she suffered as a result of Brittain’s death. Yet, the majority holds, she has no action for the same emotional distress when she is just as “directly involved” in the accident by virtue of her unsuccessful rescue attempt.
I find no basis in policy or precedent for such a result. Nothing in the language or rationale of the modified impact rule precludes a cause of action on the part of a plaintiff who, in the course of a rescue, must initiate an impact upon the tortfeasor as a part of the rescue attempt. Wood has sufficiently alleged both “impact” and “direct involvement,” and I would affirm the trial court.