In a recent case, the California Supreme Court reviewed the rules regarding the negligent infliction of emotional distress. Bystander recovery has previously been limited based on select criteria. The California Supreme Court reviewed whether one of those criteria should be contemporaneous knowledge of defendants’ role in the injury.

Facts

Plaintiff was on the phone with her daughter giving her directions. Plaintiff’s daughter was driving to a realtor’s office. While they were on the phone, plaintiff overheard her daughter gasp, and then plaintiff heard “the simultaneous, or near-simultaneous sounds of an explosive metal-on-metal vehicular crash; shattering glass; and rubber tires skidding or dragging across asphalt.”[i]

Plaintiff understood from the sounds that she had heard an accident, and when her daughter did not speak, plaintiff realized her daughter had been seriously injured. She ran to her car to drive to the scene while still yelling into her phone. Finally, she heard another voice ask her to be quiet so he could find a pulse. When the man confirmed plaintiff’s daughter was alive, he asked her to hang up and call 911.

Plaintiff “claim[ed]…the fault…was…partially with individuals and entities responsible for the condition of the roadway where the crash occurred and…sued them for negligent infliction of emotional distress.”[ii] She argued:

[The city was] at least in part responsible for the accident, and thus for [her] emotional distress, because “[t]he traffic markings, signals, warnings, medians, and fixtures thereon (or lack thereof), were so located constructed, placed, designed, repaired, maintained, used, and otherwise defective in design, manufacture and warning that they constituted a dangerous condition of public property” that “created an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of injury and harm to occupants of vehicles in the intersection.” [Plaintiff] alleged the [property owners near the intersection], too, contributed to the accident by failing to trim vegetation on their property, which had obstructed the view of traffic turning from Via Zapata onto Canyon Crest Drive.[iii]

The appellate court found plaintiff “was not entitled to recover emotional distress damages against these defendants unless at the time of the crash she was aware of a causal connection between her daughter’s injuries and the defendants’ alleged negligence in maintaining the intersection.”[iv]

Plaintiff appealed the case to the California Supreme Court, which agreed to review the case. Previously, the law had “articulated three essential limits on a bystander’s recovery for negligently caused emotional distress.”[v] These limits were that the plaintiff:

“(1) [wa]s closely related to the injury victim;

(2) [wa]s present at the scene of the injury-producing event at the time it occurs and is then aware that it is causing injury to the victim; and

(3) as a result suffer[ed] serious emotional distress — a reaction beyond that which would be anticipated in a disinterested witness and which is not an abnormal response to the circumstances.”[vi]

The California Supreme Court found there was no requirement in existing law that required plaintiff to understand at the time of the injury “how the defendants may have contributed to that injury.”[vii]

Takeaway

This case will extend responsibility in California especially for cities in similar cases. Car accidents are too common – “147,148 fatal and injury traffic crashes” in 2020 alone, which averages out to over 400 accidents a day[viii] – and at least some of them may be arguably caused by a dangerous condition the city could have fixed. If people are on the phone with loved ones and end up in an accident, cities across the state are left wide open to additional liability with the Supreme Court’s new clarification.

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Sources

[i] Downey v. City of Riverside (2023) 90 Cal.App.5th 1033, 1040–1041 [307 Cal.Rptr.3d 666, 670], rev’d and remanded (2024) 16 Cal.5th 539 [323 Cal.Rptr.3d 109, 551 P.3d 1109].

[ii] Downey v. City of Riverside (2024) 16 Cal.5th 539 [323 Cal.Rptr.3d 109, 111, 551 P.3d 1109, 1110].

[iii] Id. at 1111.

[iv] Id. at 1110.

[v] Id. at 1115.

[vi] Id., citing Thing, supra, 48 Cal.3d at pp. 667–668, 257 Cal.Rptr. 865, 771 P.2d 814, fns. omitted.

[vii] Downey v. City of Riverside (2024) 16 Cal.5th 539 [323 Cal.Rptr.3d 109, 125, 551 P.3d 1109, 1122].

[viii] “2020 California Quick Crash Facts”, CHP, https://www.chp.ca.gov/InformationManagementDivisionSite/Documents/3-California%20Quick%20Crash%20Facts%202020.pdf