Migliori v. Airborne Freight Corp.

• Decision Date: 05 February 1998
• Citation: 426 Mass. 629,690 N.E.2d 413
• Parties: Michael MIGLIORI v. AIRBORNE FREIGHT CORPORATION & another. 1
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 413

690 N.E.2d 413

426 Mass. 629

Michael MIGLIORI v. AIRBORNE FREIGHT CORPORATION & another. ¹

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Suffolk.

Argued Dec. 9, 1997.

Decided Feb. 5, 1998.

Douglas J. Beaton, North Andover, for plaintiff.

Steven C. Malone, Waltham, for defendants.

Before WILKINS, C.J., and ABRAMS, LYNCH, GREANEY, FRIED, MARSHALL and IRELAND, JJ.

FRIED, Justice.

This case comes before us on certification from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts of the following question:

"Does a person who witnesses or comes upon the scene of an accident and voluntarily renders aid to a victim to whom he or she has no familial or other pre-existing relationship, have a cognizable claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress under Massachusetts law if 1) the rescue attempt fails, and as a result, 2) the rescuer suffers severe emotional distress which 3) further leads to physical problems?"

For the reasons set forth below, we answer the question in the negative.

I

Given the procedural posture of this case, we accept as true all the factual allegations that the plaintiff makes and draw all reasonable conclusions in his favor.

The plaintiff, Michael Migliori, is a petty officer first class in the United States Navy. In August, 1990, he was stationed at the Navy-Marine Corps Reserve Center in Lawrence. He is trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and his duties at Lawrence included giving CPR instructions to other military personnel and local high school students.

At approximately noon, on August 27, 1990, the plaintiff was walking down Congress Street in Boston. There, he came upon Joanne Perkins who had been negligently struck by a van operated by the defendant Louis Giangregorio and owned by the defendant Airborne Freight Corporation. It is not clear whether the plaintiff actually witnessed the accident or came upon the scene only after the accident. The plaintiff immediately went to Perkins's aid. On discovering that Perkins had no pulse, the plaintiff began to administer CPR and managed to restore Perkins's heartbeat on two brief occasions. Perkins was bleeding from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, as well as from other injured areas of her body, and the plaintiff became drenched in blood in the course of administering CPR. Public safety personnel soon responded to the accident, and the plaintiff watched as they placed Perkins in an ambulance and drove away. Perkins was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital and was pronounced dead at 12:30 P.M.

As a result of this failed rescue attempt, the plaintiff has developed various symptoms of emotional distress that have further led to physical problems. The plaintiff apparently blames himself for Perkins's death, and is of the opinion that he has failed at the most important thing in his life. At the time of the accident, Perkins and the plaintiff were strangers.

On July 22, 1996, the plaintiff filed a Federal diversity action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (1994) asserting a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress. The defendants, in response, filed a motion for prediscovery summary judgment and contended that, under Massachusetts law, the plaintiff cannot assert a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress stemming from Perkins's death because he did not have a preexisting familial or other close relationship with Perkins. The plaintiff responded by claiming that, under the rescue doctrine, he, as a rescuer, had the requisite close relationship with Perkins to enable him to bring a suit.

Although the District Court judge was of the opinion that allowing the plaintiff to proceed on his theory would unduly expand the scope of liability for negligent conduct, he certified the question to this court for an authoritative determination of Massachusetts law.

II

Our past decisions dealing with claims of emotional or psychological injuries reflect two broad concerns. The first has to do with the difficulty of proving damages in cases involving claims of emotional injuries, or the difficulty of discriminating between real and fraudulent or imagined emotional injuries. See, e.g., Payton v. Abbott Labs, 386 Mass. 540, 546-547, 437 N.E.2d 171 (1982). The second arises from the need to impose some limits on the scope of liability, both in respect to the class of potential plaintiffs and the injuries for which such plaintiffs may claim compensation. Where the mechanism by which injury comes about includes the psychological, both the class of plaintiffs and kinds of claims are greatly and predictably expanded. We recognized in Dziokonski v. Babineau, 375 Mass. 555, 567, 380 N.E.2d 1295 (1978), that the class of persons vicariously affected by a tortfeasor's conduct may be very large. As the New York Court of Appeals once stated, "[e]very injury has ramifying consequences, like the ripplings of the waters, without end. The problem for the law is to limit the legal consequences of wrongs to a controllable degree." Tobin v. Grossman, 24 N.Y.2d 609, 619, 301 N.Y.S.2d 554, 249 N.E.2d 419 (1969).

These two concerns have moved this court to draw various distinctions in dealing with emotional injuries. Thus, until very recently, moved primarily by the idea that attendant physical harms validate plaintiffs' claims for emotional injuries, this court drew a sharp distinction between cases involving negligently caused emotional injuries with attendant physical harm, and those without attendant physical harm, and held that cognizable claims for recovery are stated only in the former. Compare Freyermuth v. Lutfy, 376 Mass. 612, 382 N.E.2d 1059 (1978), with Payton v. Abbott Labs, supra. In Sullivan v. Boston Gas Co., 414 Mass. 129, 605 N.E.2d 805 (1993), we abandoned the so-called physical harm rule. While no longer considering attendant physical harm as a necessary condition of a cognizable claim for the negligent infliction of emotional injuries, we still required "objective corroboration of the emotional distress alleged." Id. at 137-138, 605 N.E.2d 805, quoting Payton v. Abbott Labs, supra at 547, 437 N.E.2d 171.

Our second concern, to limit the scope of potential liability, has led us to discriminate among classes of plaintiffs. Not every bystander plaintiff who can show emotional injury, the defendant's negligence, and the causal connection between the two states a cognizable claim. We have imposed relational, temporal, and spatial limits on the scope of liability for emotional harm: Only a bystander plaintiff who is closely related to a third person directly injured by a defendant's tortious conduct, and suffers emotional injuries as the result of witnessing the accident or coming upon the third person soon after the accident, states a claim for which relief may be granted. Ferriter v. Daniel O'Connell's Sons, 381 Mass. 507, 518-519, 413 N.E.2d 690 (1980); Dziokonski v. Babineau, supra at 568, 380 N.E.2d 1295. ²

At the same time, we have sought to draw lines that are not arbitrary. Dziokonski v. Babineau, supra at 568, 380 N.E.2d 1295. The concern for proof seems to justify the requirement of close "familial or other relationship." Id. A parent of or another person closely related to a third person directly injured by the tortfeasor's conduct is more likely to suffer and suffer more severe emotional injuries than others who witness the accident or come upon the third person's impaired condition. As a leading text noted: "It seems sufficiently obvious that the shock of a mother at danger or harm to her child may be both a real and a serious injury. All ordinary human feelings are in favor of her action against the negligent defendant." W.L. Prosser & W.P. Keeton, Torts § 54, [426 Mass. 633] at 366 (5th ed. 1984). To be sure, a distant relative or an unrelated person may also genuinely suffer severe emotional distress on witnessing an accident. See Amaya v. Home Ice, Fuel & Supply Co., 59 Cal.2d 295, 313, 29 Cal.Rptr. 33, 379 P.2d 513 (1963), quoting Hambrook v. Stokes Bros., 1 K.B. 141, 158-159 (1925). Yet, as the Appeals Court once recognized in denying relief to a mother who suffered emotional distress upon witnessing an automobile accident that she erroneously believed involved her son, any distinction made is in "fair measure a pragmatic judgment rather than a systematic application of a general principle." Barnes v. Geiger, 15 Mass.App.Ct. 365, 369, 446 N.E.2d 78 (1983).

The requirements of spatial and temporal proximity are even more obviously grounded in practical need to draw a determinate line against excessive liability. In Ferriter v. Daniel O'Connell's Sons, supra at 518, 413 N.E.2d 690, we recognized that "[a] plaintiff who rushes onto the accident scene and finds a loved one injured has no greater entitlement to compensation for that shock than a plaintiff who rushes instead to the hospital." In general, we must acknowledge that these requirements of proximity are based more on the pragmatic need to limit the scope of potential liability, than on grounds of fairness or other imperatives of corrective justice.

III

We now apply the distinctions and limitations growing out of the two concerns discussed above to answer the question presented in this case.

A

We begin by affirming our reluctance to expand the class of bystanders who may recover for emotional distress or the circumstances in which the members of that class may recover. See Stockdale v. Bird & Son, 399 Mass. 249, 503 N.E.2d 951 (1987) (mother who did not see son's injured body until twenty-four hours after accident at funeral home not entitled to recover); Cohen v. McDonnell Douglas Corp., 389 Mass. 327, 450 N.E.2d 581 (1983) (executor of estate of mother who did not learn of her son's death in airplane crash until seven hours after the crash could not recover); Miles v. Edward O. Tabor, M.D., Inc., 387 Mass. 783, 443 N.E.2d 1302 (1982) (mother who suffered emotional distress as the result of doctor's negligence at...