Court Opinion

ID: 9723489
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:17:23.413055+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:49.059781
License: Public Domain

GARDNER, P. J.
I concur.
While I am not terribly enthusiastic about the distinction made in this case between dead bodies and live ones, I join in this opinion because it is a step, albeit a short step, in the direction of breaking down the artificial distinction between emotional distress accompanied by physical manifestation and such discomfort without that handy little gadget.
In no other area are the vagaries of our law more apparent than in the distinction between mental and emotional distress accompanied by physical manifestation and such discomfort unaccompanied by physical manifestation. Generally speaking, a plaintiff in a negligent action may not recover for mental distress without accompanying physical injury or illness. However, given the foundational physical injury or illness, one may then recover not only for physical pain and suffering but for “fright, nervousness, grief, anxiety, worry, mortification, shock, humiliation, indignity, embarrassment, apprehension, terror or ordeal.” (Capelouto v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (1972) 7 Cal.3d 889, 892-893 [103 Cal.Rptr. 856, 500 P.2d 880].) On the other hand, except for intentional or outrageous conduct (or special exceptions such as involved in this case and the situation involved in Jarchow v. Transamerica Title Ins. Co. (1975) 48 Cal.App.3d 917 [122 Cal.Rptr. 470]) such recovery is not allowed absent physical injury or illness. Why the distinction? My mental anguish is the same accompanied or unaccompanied by physical manifestation. If as a result of someone’s negligent conduct, I suffer the horrors of gut-wrenching, sleepless nights worrying about the well being of myself, my wife and my children, I should be allowed to recover without having to dream up some foundational physical ailment. If I throw up as a result of my emotional distress, I can recover. However, if I am blessed with a strong stomach, then no matter how acute my mental anguish may be, I cannot recover. This *217distinction is not only gossamer, it is whimsical. Nevertheless, it is firmly embedded in our law and from my place in the judicial pecking order, I can do nothing but grumble about it.
I would like to see the Supreme Court do away with this needless distinction. I think the charges of “vexatious suits and fictitious claims” mentioned by Prosser is illusory. I have difficulty accepting the concept of widespread abuse in allowing a person to recover for emotional distress when, at the present, we allow recovery for those who testify to such completely subjective “physical manifestations” as aches or pains. We are always going to have phony lawsuits. I doubt that doing away with this hair-splitting distinction is going to flood the courts with a new class of litigation and the rule I suggest would be a lot more honest than the present rule. If the law can handle purely mental and emotional distress in cases involving intentional or outrageous acts or the negligent mishandling of a corpse, it can do so in ordinary negligence actions.
This is not the first time this court has attempted to face the realities of mental distress without accompanying physical manifestation. In Jarchow v. Transamerica Title Ins. Co., supra, 48 Cal.App.3d 917, this court held that the negligent infliction of emotional distress was actionable in the case of the refusal of a title company to clear a title. However, a more traditional court in Quezada v. Hart (1977) 67 Cal.App.3d 754 [136 Cal.Rptr. 815], took us to task for purporting to extend the doctrine of recovery for emotional distress in negligence actions without bad faith or physical injury and said that the ruling was “unwarranted by California law.”
I would like to see the Supreme Court take a sharp knife and cut this whole cockamamie distinction out of the law. Then we could avoid such pure sophistry as that found in Fuentes v. Perez (1977) 66 Cal.App.3d 163, 168-172 [136 Cal.Rptr. 275], which purports to draw a distinction between “the physiological, rather than the psychological, branch of the human organism” and distinguish between the “suffering of the body and the mind.” We could also jettison BAJI No. 12.80 which makes the current distinction between recovery for “shock to the nervous system” and “damages for emotional distress unaccompanied by physical injury.” For too many years I cringed when reading such an instruction to the jury. Somehow it always conjured up a ghoulish vision of jurors surgically severing the brain from the rest of the body in an attempt to *218apply that rule. It seems to me that the law should drag itself into the 20th century and face up to the fact that mental anguish standing by itself is as real as such anguish accompanied by some kind of a physical manifestation.