Knaub v. Gotwalt

• Decision Date: 24 June 1966
• Citation: 220 A.2d 646,422 Pa. 267
• Parties: Wayne E. KNAUB, Delores R. Knaub, his wife, and Wayne E. Knaub as parent and natural guardian of Nancy E. Knaub, a minor, Appellants, v. Brenda L. GOTWALT.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

220 A.2d 646

422 Pa. 267

Wayne E. KNAUB, Delores R. Knaub, his wife, and Wayne E. Knaub as parent and natural guardian of Nancy E. Knaub, a minor, Appellants, v. Brenda L. GOTWALT.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

June 24, 1966.

Lewis H. Markowitz, Markowitz, Kagen & Griffith York, for appellants.

W W. Wogan and Donald H. Yost, York, for appellee.

Before BELL, C.J., and MUSMANNO, JONES, COHEN, EAGEN O'BRIEN and ROBERTS, JJ.

OPINION

BELL, Chief Justice.

This is an appeal from the Order of the Court of Common Pleas which sustained defendant's preliminary objections to plaintiffs' complaint in trespass which claimed damages for mental shock and anguish.

Plaintiffs in this trespass action were the mother, father, and sister of a young boy who was struck and killed by defendant's automobile. Decedent and his sister were crossing a highway when defendant struck and killed him, hurling his body some 60 feet. The sister was untouched, although she was standing only three feet from her brother when he was killed. The parents of the decedent were sitting in a parked car just twenty-five feet from the accident, and they as well as the sister observed this tragic event and naturally they all suffered extreme mental shock and anguish.

In order to recover, plaintiffs urge us to overrule a long line of prior decisions of this Court which admittedly cover and control their case.

This Court has consistently held: 'The rule is long and well established in Pennsylvania that there can be no recovery of damages for injuries resulting from fright or nervous shock or mental or emotional disturbances or distress, unless they are accompanied by physical injury or physical impact. Koplin v. Louis K. Liggett Co., 322 Pa. 333, 185 A. 744; Ewing v. Pittsburgh, C. & St. L. Ry. Co., 147 Pa. 40 23 A. 340, 14 L.R.A. 666; Fox v. Borkey, 126 Pa. 164, 17 A. 604; Huston v. Freemansburg Borough, 212 Pa. 548, 61 A. 1022, 3 L.R.A.,N.S., 49; Morris v. Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley Railroad Co., 228 Pa. 198, 77 A. 445; Howarth v. Adams Express Company, 269 Pa. 280, 112 A. 536; Hess v. Philadelphia Transportation Co., 358 Pa. 144, 56 A.2d 89; Potere v. City of Philadelphia, 380 Pa. 581, 112 A.2d 100; Gefter v. Rosenthal, 384 Pa. 123, 119 A.2d 250.' Bosley v. Andrews, 393 Pa. 161, 164, 142 A.2d 263, 264. This rule was reaffirmed as recently as Cucinotti v. Ortmann, 399 Pa. 26, 159 A.2d 216.

This rule applies even where the complaining party seeking relief was not merely a nearby witness but the actual victim of the alleged negligent or frightening conduct. Bosley v. Andrews, 393 Pa. 161, 142 A.2d 263, supra.

If we permitted recovery in a case such as this, our Courts would be swamped by a virtual avalanche of cases for damages for many situations and cases hitherto unrecoverable in Pennsylvania. As we said in Bosley v. Andrews, 393 Pa. pp. 168--169, 142 A.2d pp. 266--267, supra:

'To allow recovery for fright, fear, nervous shock, humiliation, mental or emotional distress--with all the disturbances and illnesses which accompany or result therefrom--where there has been no physical injury or impact, would open a Pandora's box. A plaintiff might be driving her car alertly or with her mind preoccupied, when a sudden or unexpected or exceptionally loud noise of an automobile horn behind or parallel with her car, or a sudden loud and unexpected fire engine bell or siren, or a sudden unexpected frightening buzz-sawing noise, or an unexpected explosion from blasting or dynamiting, or an unexpected nerve-wracking noise produced by riveting on a street, or the shrill and unexpected blast of a train at a spot far from a crossing, or the witnessing of a horrifying accident, or the approach of a car near or over the middle line, even though it is withdrawn to its own side in ample time to avoid an accident, or any one of a dozen other everyday events, can cause or aggravate fright or nervous shock or emotional distress or nervous tension or mental disturbance. Such an event, if compensable, may cause normal people, as well as nervous persons and persons who are mentally disturbed or mentally ill, to honestly believe that the sudden and unexpected event caused them fright or nervous shock or nervous tension with subsequent emotional distress or suffering or pain or miscarriage or heart attack, or some kind of disease. In most cases, it would be impossible for medical science to prove that these subjective symptoms could not possibly have resulted from or been aggravated or precipitated by fright or nervous shock or nervous tension or emotional disturbance or distress, each of which can in turn produce an ulcer or headaches or fainting spells or, under some circumstances, a heart attack, or a serious disease. For every wholly genuine and deserving claim, there would likely be a tremendous number of illusory or imaginative or 'faked' ones. Medical science, we repeat, could not prove that these could not have been caused or precipitated or aggravated by defendant's alleged negligent act.'

We cannot permit such chaos to permeate our law of negligence. ^[*]

Order affirmed.

MUSMANNO, J., files a dissenting Opinion.

ROBERTS, J., files a dissenting Opinion.

COHEN and EAGEN, JJ., concur in the result.

DISSENTING OPINION

MUSMANNO Justice.

It is a matter of infinite regret to me that in the train of Progress in the Law of Humanity, Pennsylvania is a car frequently clattering close to the caboose instead of cheerfully gliding over the rails immediately behind the locomotive. Why is it that in ameliorating the rigors of the common law, Pennsylvania must copy after other States, rather than take the lead? For years the question of wiping out the immunity of charity institutions from tort liability was debated in Pennsylvania but it was not until 25 or 30 States had grandly marched by proclaiming with banners flying the conquest of natural justice over formalistic antequated rules and reason over slavish adherence to outmoded argument, that this State finally joined the happy parade?

How many States must repudiate the cruel rule announced in this case before Pennsylvania consents to march in the procession of recognition of realities? The Majority of this Court holds that there can be no recovery for physical infirmities caused through the senses unless there is a physical connection or impact between the instrumentality wielded by the tortfeasor and the injured person. This rule has become know as the impact rule.

Harper and James, in their authorative and exhaustive work on The Law of Torts, have stated that 'many Anglo-American jurisdictions have come to repudiate the requirement of impact, so that it is distinctly the minority rule today.'

Why must Pennsylvania be listed among the minority when the greater number of jurisdictions upholds a proposition of natural justice? Why must Pennsylvania treat so cavalierly the Restatement of Torts, product of renowned scholars of the law who, in addition to researching the books, appraise and evaluate life's phenomena as written in the chronicles of the day and the heart of man? The Restatement declares (Sec. 436(2)(3):

'If the actor's conduct is negligent as creating an unreasonable risk of causing bodily harm to another otherwise than by subjecting him to fright, shock, or other similar and immediate emotional disturbance, the fact that such harm results from the internal operation of fright or other emotional disturbance does not protect the actor from liability.'

'The rules stated in subsection (2) applies where the bodily harm to the other results from shock or fright at harm or peril to a member of his immediate family occurring in his presence.'

The Majority Opinion in the case at bar does not differentiate the Restatement from the facts present in this appeal. It stands wholly and solely on Stare Decisis, a rule which, in this particular phase of the law, rides the back of a bucking, charging bull in Bosley v. Andrews, 393 Pa. 161, 142 A.2d 263. In that case the bull aggressively pursued the plaintiff, Mrs. Bosley, some 15 feet with lowered, impaling horns and was diverted from goring her only because of the intervention of a collie-mongrel dog. This brave dog, after its dash across the stage of heroic action, was quickly forgotten, as was also reason and humanity when the court denied Mr. Bosley the right to recover damages from the owner of the belligerent bull because its stampeding hooves had not actually trampled upon her, or its horns had not pierced her body. This, in spite of the fact that she positively suffered physical damage from the attack. The medical evidence established that the heart condition which now disabled her for life had been precipitated by the 'running, the chasing and the fear that was caused when the bull chased her.'

In my Dissenting Opinion filed in that case I said:

'I wish to go on record that the policy of non-liability announced by the Majority in this type of case is insupportable in law, logic, and elementary justice--and I shall continue to dissent from it until the cows come home.'

The Majority Opinion filed here today does not assure me that the cows are on the way to the barn. And yet it would seem that even bovine appreciation--and I mean no disrespect in this observation--should distinguish between justice and injustice in cases of this character.

The rule that there must be the mechanical requirement of impact, before recovery will be permitted, charges with lowered head against the stone wall of the most elementary phenomena observable practically every day. The impact rule presupposes that there can be no damage done to man's physical structure unless a material object dashes against it. Yet we know that people die of fright, persons faint from...