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Faya v. Almaraz3/9/1993
ver a year after their last contacts with the physician. As we noted above, there is current credible evidence of a 95% certainty that one will test positive for the AIDS virus, if at all, within six months after exposure to it. Once appellants learned of their HIV-negative status more than a year after their respective surgeries, the possibility of their contracting AIDS from Dr. Almaraz became extremely unlikely and thus, as a matter of law, might be deemed unreasonable. Therefore, appellants may only recover for their fear and its physical manifestations which may have
resulted from Almaraz's alleged negligence for the period constituting their reasonable window of anxiety -- the period between which they learned of Almaraz's illness and received their HIV-negative results.
In this regard, we note that it was formerly the rule that there could be no recovery of tort damages for mere fright or mental suffering caused by negligence unconnected with physical impact or injury . P., B. & W. R. Co. v. Mitchell, 107 Md. 600, 607, 69 A. 422 (1908). Our subsequent cases have departed from this rigid rule. In Green v. Shoemaker, 111 Md. 69, 77, 73 A. 688 (1909), we first acknowledged the rule that mere fright, without any physical injury resulting therefrom, cannot form the basis of a cause of action 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." Id. Nevertheless, we held in Shoemaker that when it is shown "that a material physical injury has resulted from fright caused by a wrongful act," there is no sound reason for denying a right of action "for such physical injury." Id. at 77. We recognized that nervous disturbances may constitute suffering of the body or of the mind since nerves and nerve centers of the body are part of the physical system which may be weakened from causes acting upon the mind. Id. at 78-79. This, we said, could be a physical injury. In so holding, we quoted with approval from Sloane v. Southern Cal. R. R., 111 Cal. 668, 44 P. 320 (1896), another tort case in which there was no physical impact, that if the plaintiff's
"'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. We then said that
"where the wrongful act complained of is the proximate cause of the injury . . . 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 . . . should be left to the jury."
Id. at 81.
We next referred in Shoemaker 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 reasonable.'"
Id. at 82. We declared in Shoemaker that "the reasoning upon which that conclusion was reached is, in our opinion, sound." Id.
Our later cases, expanding upon Shoemaker, have held that there can be compensable injuries from f
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