Court Opinion

ID: 9807425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:03:40.847732+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:36:24.075563
License: Public Domain

Olakk:, C. T.,
concurring: - The doctrine of damages for mental anguish as the probable result to be anticipated from the failure to deliver messages concerning death or illness is not only imbedded in our decisions, but it was adopted and has been reiterated after the fullest consideration and upon what seemed and still seem to us the soundest principles of justice and public policy as well. Inasmuch as the representatives of the telegraph company continue to question the *151correctness of these decisions, it may be well to again notice their principal arguments, which are:
(1) That some other courts have not held the telegraph company liable for such damages. If there is any force in this argument, it is countervailed by the fact that the courts in about an equal number of States have sustained the doctrine. The courts maintaining each side of the question are summed up by Mr. Justice Douglas in Green v. Telegraph Co., 136 N. C., 504, 505; also see Bryan v. Telegraph Co., 133 N. C., 608, and Watson Pers. Inj., sec. 450.
(2) It has been contended that damages for mental anguish should not be allowed because there can be no exact standard of measurement. But that is true in most instances in which damages of any kind are sought, especially where damages are sought for wrongful death or physical suffering. Damages for mental anguish are as old as the law. They have been allowed in all courts where they are accompanied by physical suffering, and damages for physical suffering are as difficult to admeasure as those for 'mental suffering. When the latter alone are sought to be recovered they cannot be more difficult to measure than when both mental and physical suffering are to be measured — a double uncertainty.
Besides, in very many instances damages for mental suffering unaccompanied by physical suffering have' long been allowed in all courts, as in actions for breach of promise of marriage, seduction, libel, slander, malicious arrest, false imprisonment, wrongfully putting a passenger off the train, and other instances cited, with authorities. Young v. Telegraph Co., 107 N. C., 384. To say that most of the instances in which damages have been allowed for mental anguish unaccompanied by physical injury have been actions of torts, not actions based on breach of contract, is merely to allege a technical distinction without any reason for a difference. There are many torts in which no mental sufferings should be allowed as an element of damages, and many actions ex con-*152tractu where they should be allowed. The test is not whether the actions under our former practice were ex delicto or ex contractu, but the common-sense ground, whether in each case the mental suffering is the natural and probable consequence of the breach of contract or tort. Croswell Elec., sec. 649, puts this clearly: “As damages are allowed for pecuniary loss when the subject-matter of the telegram is a pecuniary transaction, so damages should be allowed for injury to the feelings when the subject-matter of the telegram is a transaction involving feelings. Thus messages which on their face show that they relate to sickness or death of relatives, give direct information to the telegraph company of the nature of the damages which may be suffered through its negligence.”
(3) The third ground usually urged in behalf of a defendant telegraph company is the increased litigation; but as there can be no recovery unless the company has been negligent, it is entirely in the power of the defendant to relieve the courts of the labor, and itself of the expense of the threatened additional litigation, by faithfully discharging the duty it undertakes, by virtue of the public franchise it enjoys, of delivering promptly and faithfully the messages entrusted to it and which it is paid to transmit. A failure to- do so “is not a mere breach of contract, but a failure to perform a public duty which rests upon it as a servant of the people.” Reese v. Telegraph Co., 123 Ind., 294.
As was said in Cashion v. Telegraph Co., 123 N. C., 272: “A ^uasi-public corporation, exercising ordinary powers and receiving enormous profits solely in consideration of the performance of its public duties, cannot be permitted to neglect or evade those duties with practical impunity. To allow it to cancel all liability for a negligence that may have wrung the heart-strings of the citizen, for whose service it was created, by refunding the twenty-five cents which it had received but never earned, would destroy all sense of responsibility.” It shocks the moral sense of mankind.
*153In all countries but this, the telegraph is an integral part of the post-office department (charging much lower rates than here), and the direct exercise of public opinion compels efficient service, as in our postal service. But, here, notwithstanding the Act of Congress in 1869 giving the Government the option to take charge at any time of the telegraph service, and the recommendation of several Postmasters General that this be done, the telegraph service, whose efficiency is a matter of the utmost importance to the public, remains under private ownership, and public opinion is no factor in securing efficient or removing inefficient servants.
The only remedy for a citizen wronged by delayed or undelivered messages is damages at the hands of a jury for injuries caused by such negligence. So far from removing the liability for negligence in transmitting messages concerning death or illness, the public judgment and sense of justice have been always exercised, when exercised at all, by legislation reversing previous decisions of the courts which had held telegraph companies not liable for mental anguish, caused by their negligence in such cases, as in South Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia, and other States. Meadows v. Telegraph Co., 132 N. C., 44.
Our stand has been taken not hastily and unadvisedly nor been adhered to by mere persistence, but has been founded upon justice and the “reason of the thing,” as it has seemed to us.