Comstock v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 15 July 1931
• Citation: 257 N.Y. 231,177 N.E. 431
• Parties: COMSTOCK v. WILSON.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

257 N.Y. 231

177 N.E. 431

COMSTOCK

v.WILSON.

Court of Appeals of New York.

July 15, 1931.

Action by John M. Comstock, as executor of the last will and testament of Ella M. Comstock, deceased, against Helen M. Wilson. From an order of the Appellate Division (232 App. Div. 720, 247 N. Y. S. 908), affirming an order of the Trial Term denying defendant's motion for a new trial after judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals by permission of the Appellate Division, which certified a question to the Court of Appeals.

Order affirmed, and certified question answered.

The following question was certified:

‘Was it error for the trial court to refuse defendant's request to charge that if the jury find that the deceased at the time of the collision sustained only shock or fright without physical injury, they must find for the defendant?’

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division Fourth Department.

Harold R. Medina, of New York City, Nicholas J. Weldgen, of Rochester, and John W. Jordan, of New York City, for appellant.

Timothy J. Nighan and Carroll M. Roberts, both of Rochester, for respondent.

LEHMAN, J.

Plaintiff's automobile, in which the plaintiff's testatrix was a passenger, came into collision with an authomobile operated by the defendant. The collision caused some noise or ‘grating sound.’ The left fender of plaintiff's car was loosened from the running board. The plaintiff's testatrix stepped from the automobile and started to write down the defendant's name and license number. While doing so, she fainted and fell to the sidewalk, fracturing her skull. All this occurred within a few minutes after the accident. She lived about twenty minutes after the fall. The plaintiff, claiming that the death of his testatrix was the result of defendant's negligence, has recovered judgment for $5,000 against her.

The trial judge submitted to the jury, as a question of fact, whether the alleged negligence of the defendant was the proximate cause of the death of plaintiff's testatrix. He refused the defendant's request to charge that, ‘if the Jury find that the deceased at the time of the collision sustained only shock or fright, without physical injury, they must find for the defendant.’ The defendant appealed to the Appellate Division from an order denying her motion for a new trial, and the Appellate Division in granting leave to appeal from its order of affirmance has certified the question whether it was error for the trial court to refuse the defendant's request to charge. No other question may be reviewed upon this appeal.

In the case of Mitchell v. Rochester Ry. Co., 151 N. Y. 107, 110,45 N. E. 354, 355, 34 L. R. A. 781, 56 Am. St. Rep. 604, this court stated: ‘No recovery can be had for injuries sustained by fright occasioned by the negligence of another,where there is no immediate personal injury.’ There, while the plaintiff was standing upon a crosswalk, awaiting an opportunity to board one of the defendant's cars which had stopped there, a team attached to another horse car of the defendant, coming down the street, turned to the right and came so close to the plaintiff that she stood between the horses' heads when they were stopped. From fright and excitement, caused by the approach and proximity of the team, she became unconscious, and the result was a miscarriage and consequent illness. Recovery was denied to her on the ground that, ‘assuming that fright cannot form the basis of an action, it is obvious that no recovery can be had for injuries resulting therefrom.’ Page 109 of 151 N. Y.,45 N. E. 354. The appellant maintains upon this appeal that it was error, under the authority of that case, to refuse her request to charge.

That case has been much discussed and frequently criticized by legal scholars. See Throckmorton, ‘Damages for Fright,’ 34 Harvard Law Review, 260; Wilson, ‘The New York Rule as to Nervous Shock,’ 11 Cornell Law Quarterly, 512. Judicial authority supports its conclusions in some jurisdictions. Elsewhere the courts have reached other conclusions. Its conclusions cannot be tested by pure logic. The court recognized that its views of public policy to some extent dictated its decision. In fixing the limits of legal liability, such considerations may be given due weight. Only for consequences which follow from an infraction of a duty, to the injured party, from an invasion of his legal rights, is legal liability imposed. Even then legal liability does not extend beyond ‘proximate’ consequences. Practical considerations must at times determine the bounds of correlative rights and duties as well as the point beyond which the courts will decline to trace causal connection.

‘The question of liability is always anterior to the question of the measure of the consequences that go with liability. If there is no tort to be redressed, there is no occasion to consider what damage might be recovered if there were a finding of a tort.’ Palsgraf v. Long Island R. R. Co., 248 N. Y. 339, 346, 162 N. E. 99, 101, 59 A. L. R. 1253, per Cardozo, C. J. In deciding that no action lies for fright and, therefore, no action for the consequences of fright, the court was dealing with the question of liability rather than the measure of consequences that go with liability. ‘In actions of negligence damage is of the very gist and essence of the plaintiff's cause.’ 1 Street, Foundations of Legal Liability, 444; Pollock on Torts (13th Ed.) 190. Mental suffering or disturbance, even without consequences of physical injury, may in fact constitute actual damage; nevertheless the courts generally do not regard it as such damage as gives rise to a cause of action, though it be the direct result of the careless act. Whether the true explanation of that conclusion lies in an historical conception of injury or in supposed considerations of public policy may for the present be put aside. In either event the reason fails where fright or nervous shock causes visible physical injury. See Bohlen, ‘Right to Recover for Injury Resulting from Negligence without Impact,’ 41 American Law Register, 141. Then the careless act carries consequences of physical injury which, if caused directly, would undoubtedly be recognized as legal damages sufficient to support a cause of action for negligence. Refusal to sustain such a cause of action can be based only on one of two grounds: Either that the careless act invaded no right of the injured party and is not a tort, or that the physical injury consequent upon the mental disturbance or shock is not a proximate result of the tort.

Either alternative presents both theoretical and practical difficulties. The development of the law on this subject in Massachusetts strikingly illustrates these difficulties. In Canning v. Inhabitants of Williamstown, 1 Cush. (Mass.) 451, recovery was denied for fright and mental suffering without physical injury. In Warren v. Boston & Maine R. R. Co., 163 Mass. 484, 40 N. E. 895, the driver of a vehicle thrown to the ground by a collision with a railroad train was permitted to recover for physical injuries caused mainly by the nervous shock. There the court did not refuse to trace the chain of causation from nervous shock to physical injury; at least where there was a physical impact. In Spade v. Lynn & Boston R. R. Co., 168 Mass. 285, 288, 47 N. E. 88,38 L. R. A. 512, 60 Am. St. Rep. 393, it denied recovery for similar injuries where the evidence did not...