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Belcher v. T. Rowe Price Foundation Inc.3/25/1993
d that
he weight of authority both of text books and of decided cases supports the view that there can be no recovery of damages for mere fright or mental suffering, caused by negligence, unconnected with physical impact or injury . This conclusion has generally been reached in reliance upon the remoteness of the damage as well as the inexpediency of opening the door to claims difficult of precise proof or disproof and from their nature easy of simulation and liable to exaggeration.
The Court refrained from expressing any opinion upon the adequacy of mere fright or its results, when unaccompanied by physical impact or injury , as a cause of action for damages, because in " judgment there is sufficient evidence in the record before us to go to the jury . . . physical impact and injury to the [injured person being] contemporaneous with her fright. . . ."
Id. at 607-608, 69 A. 422. The Court explained:
While the physical impact or injury requisite for the purpose under discussion must be actual it need not be such as to occasion an external wound or bruise. Severe and even incurable internal injuries, of which there is no immediate visible or external evidence, may be produced by violence or accident.
Id. at 608, 69 A. 422.
The circumstances in Green, 111 Md. 69, 73 A. 688, were remarkably like the circumstances in the case now before us. The defendants were blasting rocks in the vicinity of Rebecca Green's dwelling. She testified that the first blast
knocked nearly half the plastering from the wall of the room she was in, and part of the ceiling; none of it then fell on her, though some fell on [another woman's] child. It seemed to lift the house up and then let it fall. It broke every glass in the window except one. It threw the table upside down. It broke two dozen jars belonging to in the cellar of the house.
111 Md. at 73, 73 A. 688. Ten days later
a stone burst through the roof and ceiling and came down through [Rebecca's] bed, mattress and spring, and broke
the slats and rollers. It weighed 22 pounds. That blast tore the window sash out, broke some in two, and threw them across the room.
Id. Her reaction is recounted on pages 73 and 74 of 111 Md. 73A. 688. She and her husband did not sleep in that bed for six weeks after that. They were "in terror all night of being killed." She said:
y nerves were completely broken down through fright, and I was not able to do my work. Before that time I was in ordinary health, and never was nervous. Since then I have had no health at all.
Her doctor attended her for "this nervousness," seeing her daily the latter part of April, and thereafter every week or so until fall. According to her doctor she "developed nervous prostration" which he attributed to the shock of the blasting. Her husband testified that "his wife had become a nervous wreck; that she was thirty years of age, and before this blasting had always attended to all her household duties, but since then has been unable to do so." The question relevant to our inquiry was
Does a cause of action lie for physical injury resulting from fright and nervousness caused by the wrongful acts of [another]?
The Court observed:
There is a wide divergence of judicial opinion as to whether a cause of action will lie for actual physical injuries resulting from fright and nervous shock caused by the wrongful acts of another. . . .
111 Md. at 77, 73 A. 688. But, the Court posited:
t may be considered as settled, that mere fright, without any physical injury resulting therefro
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