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Belcher v. T. Rowe Price Foundation Inc.3/25/1993
m, cannot form the basis of a cause of action.
Id. (emphasis in original). The Court explained:
This is so, because mere fright is easily simulated, and because there is no practical standard for measuring the
suffering occasioned thereby, or of testing the truth of the claims of the person as to the results of the fright. But when it is shown that a material physical injury has resulted from fright caused by a wrongful act, and especially, as in this case, from a constant repetition of wrongful acts, in their nature calculated to cause constant alarm and terror, it is difficult, if not impossible, to perceive any sound reason for denying a right of action in law, for such physical injury.
Id. (emphasis in original).
The Court quoted at length from Kemp, 61 Md. 74, and set out the general rule recognized in Kemp:
" he general rule is, in actions of tort like the present, that the wrongdoer is liable for all the direct injury resulting from his wrongful act, and that too, although the extent or special nature of the resulting injury could not, with certainty, have been foreseen or contemplated as the probable result of the act done."
Id. at 78. The Court looked with approval at Sloane v. Southern Cal. R. R., 111 Cal. 668, 44 P. 320(1896), in which there was no physical impact:
"The real question presented . . . is, whether the subsequent nervous disturbance of the plaintiff was a suffering of the body or of the mind. * * * The nerves and nerve centres of the body are a part of the physical system, and are not only susceptible of lesion from external causes, but are also liable to be weakened and destroyed from causes primarily acting upon the mind. If these nerves, or the entire nervous system are thus affected, there is a physical injury thereby produced; and if the primal cause of this injury is tortious, it is immaterial whether it is direct, as by a blow, or indirect, through some action upon the mind."
111 Md. at 79, 73 A. 688. The Court conceded
that the numerical weight of authority supports the general rule that there can be no recovery for nervous affections unaccompanied by contemporaneous physical
injury , but the sounder view, in our opinion, is, that there are exceptions to this rule, and that where the wrongful act complained of is the proximate cause of the injury, within the principles announced in Kemp's Case, supra, and where the injury ought, in the light of all the circumstances, to have been contemplated as a natural and probable consequence thereof, the case falls within the exception and should be left to the jury.
Id. at 81, 73 A. 688.
The Court referred to Denver & R. G. R. Co. v. Roller, 100 F. 738(9th Cir.1900), in which the jury was instructed as follows:
"If great fright was a reasonable and natural consequence of the circumstances in which the collision aforesaid, with the ensuing wreckage, explosion and conflagration, placed the plaintiff, and if she was actually put in fright by those circumstances, and injury to her health was a reasonable and natural consequence of such fright, and was actually and proximately occasioned thereby, then said injury is one for which damages are recoverable."
111 Md. at 82, 73 A. 688. The Green Court declared that " he reasoning upon which that conclusion was reached is, in our opinion, sound. . . ." Id. The Roller Court explained:
We all know, by common knowledge, that serious results may naturally follow from bodily injuries, without breaking an arm, or leg, or bones of the body. The body and mind are so intimately connect
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