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Belcher v. T. Rowe Price Foundation Inc.3/25/1993
State Traffic Comm., 230 Md. 91, 185 A.2d 715(1962), which distinguished between situations where the cause of injuries need not be proved by expert testimony, and situations that require medical proof. Vance quoted Wilhelm 230 Md. at 99, 185 A.2d 715:
"There are, unquestionably, many occasions where the causal connection between a defendant's negligence and a disability claimed by a plaintiff does not need to be established by expert testimony. Particularly is this true when the disability develops coincidentally with, or within a reasonable time after, the negligent act, or where the causal connection is clearly apparent from the illness itself and the circumstances surrounding it, or where the cause of the injury relates to matters of common experience, knowledge, or observation of laymen . . . ."
286 Md. at 503, 408 A.2d 728. "These occasions," we noted in Vance,
were distinguished from situations involving complex medical questions, and especially cases turning on purely
subjective symptoms or in instances where there is a significant temporal lapse between the disability and the negligent act. In the second type of situation proof of causation must be by expert testimony.
Id.
Vance's explication of Bowman is, at this time, the definitive Maryland case on mental distress as the basis of damages in negligent tort actions. It carefully traced the evaluation of that concept. The traditional rule, formulated in the nineteenth century, did not permit damages solely for mental distress. Vance, 286 Md. at 496, 408 A.2d 728.
Instead, damages for mental distress had a parasitic status; recovery was dependent upon an immediate physical injury accompanying an independently actionable tort.
Id. Furthermore, " he early cases generally denied recovery for mental distress when the alleged personal injury resulted solely from the internal operation of mental or emotional stresses . . . ." Id. There developed an exception to this rule when there was physical impact upon a person coincident in time and place with the occasion producing the mental distress. Id. 496-497, 408 A.2d 728. The "impact rule," on occasion, was stretched to extreme limits to permit recovery for mental distress, and we rejected the rule in Green, Id. at 497, 408 A.2d 728. As we have seen, Green adopted "a rule -- later characterized as the 'modern rule' -- which permitted recovery of damages for negligent infliction of mental distress if a 'physical injury ' results from the commission of a tort, regardless of impact." Id. Roch, as we have noted, stated that "damages may be recovered for physical injuries caused by fright or shock." 160 Md. at 191, 153 A. 22. Then Bowman was decided. It was accepted as "the leading Maryland case on the recovery of damages for negligently inflicted emotional distress . . . ." Vance, 286 Md. at 499, 408 A.2d 728. Vance elaborated on the term "mental state" suggested in the more liberal Bowman rule. Vance posited that in addition to the ways of proving the requisite "physical injury " resulting from emotional distress, which pertain to manifestations of a
physical injury through evidence of an external condition or by symptoms of a pathological or physiological state, the requisite "physical injury" may be proved "by evidence indicative of a 'mental state' . . . capable of objective determination." 286 Md. at 500, 408 A.2d 728
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