Court Opinion

ID: 9708913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:35:17.037579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:44.584462
License: Public Domain

*284LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I join Justice Papadakos’ dissenting opinion in this case and reaffirm my position as expressed by Justice Flaherty in Yandrick v. Radic, 495 Pa. 243, 433 A.2d 459 (1981) (Opinion in Support of Reversal, joined by Larsen and Kauffman, JJ.).
Accepting the allegations of the complaint as true,.as we must for purposes of this appeal, Ms. Mazzagatti lost a daughter as a result of appellee Everingham’s negligence, and witnessed the horrifying (to any parent) aftermath of the accident. Her emotional distress was the natural, probable and foreseeable result of that accident.
I also am disturbed by the majority’s apparent concern for the plight of the insurance industry, although cloaked in the guise of concern for the “consumer public.” The majority expresses concern “as to the dangers of unwarranted extension in the area of tort recovery,” majority at 278, n. 8, and to illustrate the dangers, cites the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Nix in Amadio v. Levin, 509 Pa. 199, 501 A.2d 1085, 1101 (1985). That dissenting opinion in Amadio states:
Another basic fallacy with the thinking of those who propose unlimited expansion of tort recovery is the failure to recognize that it is the consumer public that ultimately must bear the loss for the inflationary spiral that follows in its wake. More frequent judgments with escalating awards creates a situation that all policy holders, and not the insurance companies, ultimately must meet. The rising costs, generated by increasing numbers of law suits and higher judgments are tolerable provided that the occasion for the injury justifies the action and the recovery reflects the actual loss. If either is out of kilter an undue burden is unfairly passed on to the innocent citizen policy holders.
Id., at 509 Pa. 231-232, 501 A.2d 1101-02.
First, to my knowledge no member of the bench or the bar of this Commonwealth has ever “propose[d] unlimited *285expansion of tort recovery” and it is misleading and overly dramatic to suggest that recognition of a cause of action for negligent infliction of emotional distress for this plaintiff under the circumstances of this case will lead inexorably to unlimited or unwarranted expansion of tort recovery.
Second, it is manifestly inappropriate for an appellate court to take judicial notice of the “plight of the insurance industry,” adopt the industry’s unilateral, self-serving and hotly contested assessment as to the causes of that plight (i.e., “increasing numbers of law suits and higher judgments”), and factor this assessment into its determination of whether an injured party has stated a cause of action. While the army of insurance lobbyists has convinced some observors that “increasing numbers of lawsuits and higher judgments” have contributed to the “inflationary spiral” and have increased cost to the “consumer public” by way of higher premiums and unavailability of coverage, that theory of causation of the “insurance crisis” is far from universally accepted. In fact, a significant and growing body of public opinion controverts not only the insurance industry’s theory of causation and its cry for tort reform, but also the statistics and “worst-case” anecdotes that have been played upon by the industry to fuel this engine of reform. For example, the Consumers Union, an independent, non-profit, unaffiliated research and testing organization, has recently written:
In its advertising and in most statements to the press and the public, the insurance industry lays blame for the crisis on lawyers, juries, or victims whose alleged carelessness brought on their own problems. Lawyers use the civil justice system “to right every imagined wrong,” cries the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group.
A more objective analysis suggests that the “crisis” is of the insurance industry’s own making. A Washington state task force concluded last year that the crisis “is mostly a result of poor management practices by the [insurance] companies.” In New York, a report of the *286Governor’s Advisory Commission on Liability Insurance said that “the industry’s poor recent financial condition largely reflects self-inflicted wounds.”
* * * * # *
The insurance industry is trying to turn its crisis into an opportunity — a chance to press for one of its favorite objectives, “tort reform.” In plain words, the industry's version of tort reform means placing limits on the rights of injured people to sue for and recover damages.
Consumer Reports, August, 1986, The Manufactured Crisis, Liability-Insurance Companies Have Created A Crisis And Dumped It On You, 544-545. The Consumers Union is certainly not the first to suggest that the “insurance crisis” is largely a product of the industry’s greed, bad management and risky investments and that the industry’s bemoaning of excessive jury verdicts and the “litigation explosion” are greatly exaggerated and inaccurate. See, e.g.: Fortune, July 7, 1986, Tort Laws Under Fire; MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, July 1, 1986, Transcript No. 2807, Freeze in Florida [Insurance Premiums] (featuring debate between, inter alia, insurance industry representatives and Ralph Nader on behalf of the National Insurance Consumer Organization over responsibility for the “insurance crisis”); Ledewitz, B., Are Tort Reform Proposals Constitutional?, Pa.Law Journal-Reporter, June 23, 1986 (Controversy over the extent and, indeed, the existence of a liability insurance crisis in this country fills the media today.”); McCombie, B., The “Catch-22” In Insurance, Newsweek, August 11, 1986; Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1986, Data Refutes Claim of “Deep Pocket” Victimization, Prop. 51 Foes Assert (opponents of California’s Proposition 51 charge that “municipal insurance crisis” is being used as a “front” by insurers to avoid paying their full share of damages in personal injury suits); The Economist, March 1, 1986, Litigious America; National Journal, February 15, 1986, Legal Affairs: Finger-Pointing Distinguishes Attempts To Fix Blame For Liability Crisis; The Washington Post, January 7, 1986, Nader Charges Insur*287ers With Price-Gouging; Cf. Financial Times, April 14, 1986, Survey: Insurance And Insurance Broking 5; U.S. Industry Under Consumer Fire.
It is inappropriate for this Court to gratuitiously enter this debate, particularly where no case or controversy or evidence concerning the “insurance crisis” has been presented to us in an adversarial setting designed to test the statistics and theories of both sides of the issue. It is unseemly for this Court to arbitrarily choose sides in the debate and, by dictum, align itself with the insurance industry and attempt to judicially “solve” the enormously complex insurance crisis by denying Ms. Mazzagatti the right to seek recovery for her injuries, distress and deep trauma wrought at the hand of a careless driver.1 The debate over who or what to blame for the insurance crisis in America should be carried on in the marketplace of ideas and public opinion and in the halls of the legislatures, not rashly injected as make-weight rationalization in a judicial opinion offered to justify the denial of redress in the courts to a deserving plaintiff for her injuries.
PAPADAKOS, J., joins this dissenting opinion.

. It has been suggested that "what is needed to alleviate the problem is not tort reform but better regulation of the insurance industry.” Consumer Reports, supra at 548. Such regulation would include price regulation “to keep prices on an even keel, discouraging both excessive and artificial cyclical price cuts that endanger the health of insurance companies and excessive price hikes that create hardships for consumers,” limiting the companies ability to cancel and non renew coverage where the "level of risk" has not become unreasonable, "beefing up” the insurance regulators and consumer advocacy, subjecting the insurance industry to antitrust laws, enact conflict-of-interest policies for the insurance regulators, and provide incentives for business and municipalities with good, proven safety records. Id. at 548-49.