Court Opinion

ID: 9848848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:28:41.713837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:49.748663
License: Public Domain

*589HUNSTEIN, Justice,
concurring specially.
I agree with the majority that the mother in this case should be allowed to pursue a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress she sustained from witnessing the injury and death of her child. Unlike the majority, however, I would not make it a prerequisite to recovery that the mother prove she herself sustained an “impact,” i.e., physical injury, and thus reject the majority’s endorsement of a position “that is distinctly the minority rule today.” (Footnote omitted.) 3 Harper, James & Gray, The Law of Torts, § 18.4, p. 687 (2nd ed. 1986). Although Georgia has heretofore been one of the few states to refuse to recognize “bystander liability,” other states have been far more progressive and thus have had several decades to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages of the various approaches applied by courts in this area of the law. Based on my review of foreign case law and learned treatises, I would endorse the majority rule, as derived from the seminal case of Dillon v. Legg, 441 P2d 912 (Cal. 1968), establishing foreseeability of emotional harm as the general test of liability. Dobbs, The Law of Torts, § 309, p. 840. la. Dillon, the California Supreme Court ruled that in order to determine if a defendant owes a bystander a duty of care, the courts
will take into account such factors as the following: (1) Whether plaintiff was located near the scene of the accident as contrasted with one who was a distance away from it. (2) Whether the shock resulted from a direct emotional impact upon plaintiff from the sensory and contemporaneous observance of the accident, as contrasted with learning of the accident from others after its occurrence. (3) Whether plaintiff and the victim were closely related, as contrasted with an absence of any relationship or the presence of only a distant relationship.
Dillon v. Legg, supra at 920. See also Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts, § 54, p. 366 (5th ed. 1984), stating that the “bystander proximity” doctrine involves consideration of (1) physical proximity, i.e., the bystander’s location in regard to the scene of the accident; (2) temporal proximity, i.e., the bystander’s personal observation of the accident; and (3) relational proximity, i.e., the bystander’s connection to the victim. The foreseeability rule, first proposed in the Dillon opinion, has since been modified and refined by many states, including California itself, which have followed its rationale to arrive at fair and pragmatic solutions to its application. See Dobbs, supra at § 309, p. 841. It is beyond the range of a special concurrence to define the parameters of the foreseeability rule this Court should apply in Georgia. It is sufficient to note that any reasonable version of the foresee*590ability rule is preferable to the repudiated, regressive impact rule adopted by the majority.
Decided July 10, 2000.
The majority cautions against an imprudent abandonment of over a hundred years of Georgia precedent. However, this Court, by unanimously accepting the proposition that emotional injuries due to witnessing a negligently-caused injury to a third person are compensable, has abandoned that law. Having made this important and long overdue decision, however, it behooves this Court not to misdirect the law into an imprudent approach that has been roundly rejected and criticized by our sister states. The majority opens the door to bystander liability only to limit recovery within the confines of the impact rule, a rule the majority readily admits is based on policy considerations widely recognized to be “wholly invalid.” Majority Opinion, p. 587. The majority proposes to adopt the impact rule because it provides a “brighter line” for liability and foreseeability purposes. However, the impact rule also creates an irrational and indefensible distinction between injured and uninjured parents who witness a calamitous injury to a child.
We have the good fortune to be in, a position to benefit from our sister states’ three decades worth of experience in this area of the law. The majority’s adoption of the impact rule is needlessly tentative and backwards-thinking in light of the practical knowledge and analysis available to us to evaluate the proper approach to bystander liability law. The modified foreseeability rule I propose this Court adopt is the tried and tested result of our sister states’ experimentation. It is just as capable as the impact rule of providing a framework which “appropriately restricts recovery to those directly affected by the defendant’s negligent act or omission,” Majority Opinion, p. 588, and does so without creating an artificial barrier to recovery which serves only to foreclose relief to parties with genuine claims. Thus, while I concur fully in the majority’s decision to allow a parent to attempt to recover for serious emotional distress from witnessing a child’s suffering and death, without regard to whether the emotional trauma arises out of the parents’ own physical injury, I cannot endorse the proposed minority impact rule. Instead, I would join the majority of states and adopt the foreseeability rule, which would allow the factfinder to make a case-by-case analysis of the facts applying the factors in Dillon, supra, in order to determine whether the defendant was liable for the breach of a duty of due care owed to the parent.
I am authorized to state that Justice Sears joins in this special concurrence.
*591Lanham & McGehee, William C. Lanham, Clark H. McGehee, for appellants.
Allen & Associates, Twanda Turner-Hawkins, Cooper & Markarenko, Gary M. Cooper, for appellees.