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Perrotti v. Gonicberg7/7/2005
e standards as the trial court when reviewing the decision of a trial justice on a motion for [judgment as a matter of law]." Francis v. American Bankers Life Assurance Company of Florida, 861 A.2d 1040, 1045 (R.I. 2004) (quoting Gallucci v. Humbyrd, 709 A.2d 1059, 1062 (R.I. 1998)).
The only issue for the jury to decide in this case was the appropriate amount of damages, liability having been admitted by defendant before trial.
"The question of the amount of damages is important, as well as that of liability, and the trial court is * * * duty bound to give it serious consideration, keeping in mind that the burden is upon the plaintiff to prove the damages by a preponderance of the evidence. A plaintiff should be compensated for all his damages of which the defendants' negligence was the proximate cause, but no claim for damages should be allowed to stand where such claim is not supported by the required degree of proof, or is speculative, or imaginary, or is clearly attributable to other causes." Andrews v. Penna Charcoal Co., 55 R.I. 215, 222, 179 A. 696, 700 (1935).
One of the avenues for a plaintiff to recover damages for mental suffering in a case involving a negligent defendant, and the one on which the trial justice based her decision, is to establish a case of negligent infliction of emotional distress. Only two groups of plaintiffs are able, however, to seek recovery under a theory of negligent infliction of emotional distress: "those within the 'zone-of-danger' who are physically endangered by the acts of a negligent defendant, and bystanders related to a victim whom they witness being injured." Jalowy v. Friendly Home, Inc., 818 A.2d 698, 710 (R.I. 2003) (citing Marchetti v. Parsons, 638 A.2d 1047, 1049, 1051 (R.I. 1994)).
In addition, plaintiffs must "as a result of experiencing the accident, suffer serious emotional injury that is accompanied by physical symptomatology." Marchetti, 638 A.2d at 1052. In DiBattista v. State, 808 A.2d 1081 (R.I. 2002), a case involving claims for negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, the Court said that " o defeat a motion for summary judgment, the [plaintiffs] could not rely upon 'unsupported conclusory assertions of physical ills contained in the plaintiffs' complaint.'" Id. at 1089 (quoting Clift v. Narragansett Television L.P., 688 A.2d 805, 813 (R.I. 1996)). "Other than generalized assertions in plaintiffs' amended complaint, [they] did not produce evidence of the requisite physical manifestations of their alleged emotional distress. Thus, as a matter of law, the emotional distress claims were not entitled to survive the summary-judgment motion." Id.
In Reilly v. United States, 547 A.2d 894 (R.I. 1988), the Court gave a detailed reasoning for the requirements of physical symptomatology. The Court said that "in requiring physical symptomatology as an element of a claim for the negligent infliction of emotional distress, we focus our attention and our concern on the subjectivity inherent in a claim for purely emotional distress." Id. at 897.
"A plaintiff may be genuinely, though wrongly, convinced that a defendant's negligence has caused her to suffer emotional distress.
If such a plaintiff's testimony is believed, and there is no requirement of objective corroboration of the emotional distress alleged, a defendant would be held liable unjustifiably. It is in recognition of the tricks that the human mind can play upon itself, as much as of the deception that people are capable of perpetrating upon one another, that we continue to rely upon traditional indicia of harm to provide objective evidence that a plaintiff actually has suffered emotional distress." Id.
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