Western Union Telegraph Company v. Ferguson

• Decision Date: 28 May 1901
• Docket Number: 19,576
• Citation: 60 N.E. 674,157 Ind. 64
• Parties: Western Union Telegraph Company v. Ferguson
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

60 N.E. 674

157 Ind. 64

Western Union Telegraph Company v. Ferguson

No. 19,576

Supreme Court of Indiana

May 28, 1901

From Monroe Circuit Court; W. H. Martin, Judge.

Action against telegraph company for damages. From action of court in overruling demurrer to complaint, defendant appeals.

Reversed.

T. J Louden, J. H. Louden, S. N. Chambers, S. O. Pickens, C. W Moores and G. H. Fearons, for appellant.

J. E Henley and J. B. Wilson, for appellee.

Baker J. Jordan, J., dissents.

OPINION

Baker, J.

This appeal has been transferred here by the Appellate Court under § 1362 Burns 1894, § 6586 Horner 1897, with the recommendation that the case of Reese v. Western Union Tel. Co., 123 Ind. 294, 24 N.E. 163, be overruled. Western Union Tel. Co. v. Ferguson, 26 Ind.App. 213, 59 N.E. 416.

Appellee brought this action to recover damages for appellant's negligent failure to deliver a telegram. The message read: "To Howard Ferguson, Bushrod, Ind. Grandma is dead. Will be buried Thursday, two o'clock. Come. Fred Ferguson." By the failure to deliver, appellee received neither pecuniary nor bodily injury, but suffered mental anguish consequent upon his being deprived of the opportunity of attending his grandmother's funeral. The assignments that the court erred in overruling the demurrer to the complaint and in denying appellant a new trial present the question whether the negligent causing of mental anguish alone is an actionable wrong. An affirmative answer was given in the Reese case, decided in 1890, and the question has not been raised in this court since then. The Reese case is hereby overruled for the following reasons:

(1) Though courts should and do extend the application of the rules of the common law to the new conditions of advancing civilization, they may not rightfully create a new principle unknown to the common law nor abrogate a known one. If new conditions can not properly be met by the application of existing laws, the supplying of needful new laws is the province of the legislative, not the judicial, department. The "mental anguish" law, so called, was first announced in SoRelle v. Western Union Tel Co., 55 Tex. 308, 40 Am. Rep. 805, decided in 1881. Telegraphy was then a comparatively new element in society; but mental anguish antedated the beginnings of the common law. In determining the limits within which mental anguish was cognizable in the courts, the common law permitted that state of mind to be considered as an element in admeasuring damages in but two classes of cases, broadly speaking. In one, the negligent act was the proximate cause of a physical hurt; and the mental anguish for which compensation was allowed was the proximate result of the physical hurt, not of the negligent act. For the agonies of mind the plaintiff suffered while the train bore down upon him with his foot caught in the frog, not one cent; but damages were allowable only for the mental anguish resulting from the fact that he must go through life a cripple. The using of cases of this class in support of the "mental anguish" doctrine is not an extension of the application of the rules of the common law to new conditions, but is a distortion of the rules themselves, resulting from the failure to distinguish between the mental anguish that is attributable directly to the negligent act and the mental anguish that is the direct result of the physical hurt produced by the negligent act. In the other class of cases, of which malicious prosecution, seduction, libel, are illustrative, the wrongful act was affirmative, was one of commission, not merely of omission, was the product of intent or malice, express or implied; the wrongful act was the proximate cause of a legal hurt (a hurt that the law recognizes) for which damages were recoverable, irrespective of mental anguish; and the damages allowable for mental anguish were not merely compensation for the mental condition produced by the legal hurt but were also punishment for the wilful wrong. This class of cases is further removed from the "mental anguish" doctrine than the first. Not only is there the distinction that exists between the first class of cases and the "mental anguish" doctrine, namely, that in the one the mental anguish hangs upon the hurt produced by the negligent act, while in the other the mental anguish hangs directly upon the negligent act; but there is also the distinction that wilfulness or malice is found in the second class of cases, while the "mental anguish" doctrine is based on pure negligence. One who unintentionally fails to perform a duty should pay compensatory damages only. One who maliciously infringes another's legal rights should pay both compensatory and punitive damages. To apply the rules relating to punitive damages for wilful wrongs to a case of unintentional default, is certainly not a mere extension of the application of the rules of the common law to new conditions. These classes of cases in which mental anguish is cognizable as an incident to causes of action complete without it, at least negatively indicate the common law rule that mental anguish as the proximate and sole result of a negligent act does not constitute a cause of action. And the rule follows affirmatively from the principle that damages may not be remote, nor conjectural, nor speculative. Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Exch. 341, 5 Eng. Rul. Cas. 502, 525. The supreme court of Florida in International Tel. Co. v. Saunders, 32 Fla. 434, 14 So. 148, 21 L. R. A. 810, in reviewing the Texas decision in SoRelle v. Western Union Tel. Co., supra, said: "The court in that case asserts that it is the settled rule of law in that state that injury to the feelings, caused by the wilful neglect or failure of another, constitutes such actual damages for which a recovery may be had, and cites as authority for such assertion the cases of Hays v. Houston, etc., R. Co., 46 Tex. 272, 279, and Houston, etc., R. Co. v. Randall, 50 Tex. 254, 261. In neither of these cases is the doctrine either settled or asserted that injury to the feelings, or mental suffering alone can be made the subject of a suit for compensative damages. The case of Hays, supra, was against a railroad company for damages for wrongfully and forcibly ejecting the plaintiff from its passenger train in the presence of his wife and family, in which it was claimed that the ejectment was done in a rude and insulting manner, and by personal violence, resulting in injuries to plaintiff's clothing, and bruises to his person. Exemplary or punitive damages were claimed, and the jury were instructed to estimate the actual damages by the 'injuries sustained by the plaintiff in his person, his estate and his feelings,' and it was held that by this charge the subject of the amount of actual damages was fairly placed before the jury. But nowhere is it asserted that mental suffering alone can be made an independent basis for admeasuring damages. The case, like many others founded on tort that might be cited, simply holds that mental suffering, or injured feelings, may be taken into consideration as an element of damage when coupled with or accompanied by substantive injury to the person or estate, upon the ground, as stated in the authorities, that in such cases the mental suffering growing out of and produced by the physical injury is so interwoven with the latter that it is impossible to consider the one without contemplating the other. * * * The same may be said of the case of Randall, supra. In that case the plaintiff, a brakeman on the defendant's trains, sued the company for damages for its negligence in having an open ditch across its track, into which he fell while performing the duty of coupling two of defendant's cars, and whereby his arm was run over and crushed by the cars, necessitating its amputation. In that case, too, the doctrine is sanctioned that an element of the verdict may be compensation for the mental and physical suffering caused by the injury. But nowhere is the doctrine sanctioned that mental suffering alone can sustain an action. For the support of its ruling in the SoRelle case the Texas court next quotes at length the dictum of the authors of Shearman & Redfield on Negligence, which dictum--as originally incorporated in their work--was entirely without the support of any adjudged case. The seduction case of Phillips v. Hoyle, 4 Gray 568, is next invoked to the support of the Texas court, where injury to the feelings of the parent in consequence of the daughter's seduction was held to be an element of damages. The fact seems to have been overlooked, in citing this case to its support, that in cases of seduction, and other torts independent of contract, injured feelings are given consideration, not so much as a criterion for the admeasurement of compensation, but as a standard by which to estimate the enormity of the outrage, wilfully committed, and as a guide whether the damages to be allowed, as punishment, shall be higher or lower. The next and last authority cited to the support of the SoRelle case is the case of Roberts v. Graham, 73 U.S. 578, 6 Wall. 578, 18 L.Ed. 791, but we fail to find in it any reference whatever to the subject of damages for injured feelings or mental suffering, the whole case being confined to a discussion of the question of the sufficiency of the allegations of a declaration or complaint for general damages as a predicate for the introduction of proof of special damage. The doctrine of the SoRelle case has for its support, then, in reality, only the unsupported dictum of Shearman & Redfield in their work on Negligence. In the case of Gulf, etc., R. Co. v. Levy, 59 Tex. 563, 46 Am. Rep. 278, decided in 1883, the SoRelle case was expressly overruled in so far as it held that an action for mental...