Carlinville Nat. Bank v. Rhoads

• Decision Date: 01 September 1978
• Docket Number: No. 14775,14775
• Parties: , 20 Ill.Dec. 386 The CARLINVILLE NATIONAL BANK, Executor of the Estate of Harold W. Stephenson, Deceased, and Lucile Stephenson, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Kent Y. RHOADS, M. C. Transfer, Inc., Gerald Lippold and Rodney Arnett, d/b/a Lippold and Arnett Trucking Company, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

Page 63

380 N.E.2d 63

63 Ill.App.3d 502, 20 Ill.Dec. 386

The CARLINVILLE NATIONAL BANK, Executor of the Estate of Harold W. Stephenson, Deceased, and Lucile Stephenson, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Kent Y. RHOADS, M. C. Transfer, Inc., Gerald Lippold and Rodney Arnett, d/b/a Lippold and Arnett Trucking Company, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 14775.

Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District.

Sept. 1, 1978.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 19, 1978.

Phelps, Carmody & Kasten, Carlinville, for plaintiff-appellant; Carl E. Kasten, Carlinville, of counsel.

Denby, Dobbs & Meno, Stuart Dobbs, Carlinville, for defendants-appellees.

REARDON, Justice:

Lucile Stephenson (hereinafter referred to as plaintiff), widow of Harold W. Stephenson, appeals the dismissal by the circuit court of Macoupin County on November 16, 1977, of counts V, VI and IX of her amended complaint seeking compensatory damages for emotional distress and psychiatric trauma sustained by her as a result of witnessing her husband's death, allegedly caused by the negligence of defendant Kent Y. Rhoads, an agent of the other defendants, M. C. Transfer, Inc., and two individuals doing business as the Lippold and Arnett Trucking Company. The other counts of the complaint, including counts filed by Carlinville National Bank as executor of the estate of plaintiff's husband, are not involved in this appeal.

In the complaint, plaintiff alleged that on August 14, 1976, her husband, Harold W. Stephenson, was driving their automobile in which she was a passenger on a blacktop north of Macoupin Station, Illinois, when it was struck by an oncoming truck driven by defendant Rhoads, an agent of defendant M. C. Transfer Company, Inc. The complaint further states that as a result of the collision, Harold Stephenson was instantly killed, and the plaintiff was physically injured. In count III of the complaint, which is still pending, plaintiff seeks to recover for those physical injuries and for the mental trauma directly related to those injuries.

In counts V, VI, and IX, plaintiff alleged that immediately prior to the crash, she saw the truck driven by defendant Rhoads cross the center line and collide into their vehicle. Immediately after the crash, plaintiff alleged that she tried to communicate with her husband and discovered that he was lying over the steering wheel and was dead. As a proximate result thereof, plaintiff alleged in these counts that she sustained severe mental pain, fright, shock, depression, instability, nervous tension, and experienced physical manifestations of this emotional distress including dizziness, chest discomfort, anxiety attacks, insomnia, and frequent awakenings. Additionally, plaintiff alleged that she incurred large psychiatric costs and hospital costs for two lengthy hospital stays for psychiatric treatment and will have to incur psychiatric treatment in the future.

The issue presented on appeal is whether a cause of action should be recognized in favor of the plaintiff for negligent infliction of mental distress caused as a result of witnessing, as a passenger in the same car, her husband's death in an automobile collision.

It is well settled in Illinois that a motion to dismiss a complaint, like a common law demurrer, admits facts well pleaded for the purpose only of determining whether, as a matter of law, those facts pleaded state a claim upon which relief may be granted. (O'Fallon Development Co. v. Ring (1967), 37 Ill.2d 84, 88, 224 N.E.2d 782, 784; Hubbard v. Aetna Insurance Co. (1976), 37 Ill.App.3d 666, 669, 347 N.E.2d 396, 399.) The standard of review on appeal is similarly whether the complaint alleged facts which sufficiently state a cause of action. Psyhogios v. Village of Skokie (1972), 4 Ill.App.3d 186, 191, 280 N.E.2d 552, 556.

Illinois has long followed the view that there can be no recovery for negligent infliction of mental distress in the absence of some contemporaneous physical impact. In Braun v. Craven (1898), 175 Ill. 401, 420, 51 N.E. 657, 664, the supreme court held that no liability exists for negligent acts which occasion fright or terror where there has been no accompanying physical impact, even if nervous shock, which constitutes a physical injury, follows.

On the other hand, where the defendant's negligence inflicts an immediate physical injury, such as a broken leg, it is well settled that Illinois courts will allow recovery for the mental disturbance accompanying the injury. (City of Chicago v. McLean (1890), 133 Ill. 148, 153, 24 N.E. 527, 528; Budek v. City of Chicago (1935), 279 Ill.App. 410, 427; Horan v. Klein's-Sheridan, Inc. (1965), 62 Ill.App.2d 455, 460, 211 N.E.2d 116, 118.) These decisions, however, have specifically restricted recovery to the mental anguish directly connected to the bodily injury. As the court stated in McLean, "Any mental anguish which may not have been connected with the bodily injury, but caused by some conception arising from a different source, could not properly have been taken into consideration by the jury." 133 Ill. 148, 153, 24 N.E. 527, 528.

Where the emotional disturbance and its consequences are caused by distress at some peril or harm to another, Illinois courts have also denied recovery. In Phillips v. Dickerson (1877), 85 Ill. 11, a married woman who heard but did not see a quarrel between her husband and the defendant, sued to recover damages for a miscarriage caused by her fright. The supreme court held that there could be no recovery by the woman for miscarriage or for emotional disturbance suffered by her when no physical contact with the defendant was involved, because such damages were too remote, and they could not be regarded as the natural and proximate consequence of the defendant's conduct. In Duncan v. Martin's Restaurant, Inc. (1952), 347 Ill.App. 183, 190, 106 N.E.2d 731, 734, the pregnant plaintiff became ill after eating food served at the defendant restaurant. Three days after the meal she gave birth to a premature baby which died. The court held that she could recover for pain and mental anguish caused as a consequence of her injuries, but not for the purely sentimental mental anguish caused by the child's death.

In McCullough v. Orcutt (1957), 14 Ill.App.2d 513,...