''Thing v. La Chusa'', 48 Cal. 3d 644 (1989), was a case decided by the

Supreme Court of California The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ...

that limited the scope of the

tort A tort is a civil wrong that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with criminal wrongs that are punishable ...

negligent infliction of emotional distress The tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) is a controversial cause of action, which is available in nearly all U.S. states but is severely constrained and limited in the majority of them. The underlying concept is that one has ...

. The

majority opinion In law, a majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision. Not all cases have ...

was authored by Associate Justice

David Eagleson David Newton Eagleson (October 4, 1924 – May 23, 2003) was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California from 1987 to 1991. Biography Eagleson was born in Los Angeles, California, and educated in the p ...

, and it is regarded as his single most famous opinion and representative of his conservative judicial philosophy.

Factual background

John Thing, a minor and son of plaintiff Maria Thing, was injured when he was struck by a car driven by James La Chusa. The plaintiff was close by, but did not see or hear the accident. The plaintiff's daughter informed her of the accident, and when the plaintiff arrived on the scene she saw her bloody and unconscious son and suffered emotional distress as a result. The trial court granted the defendant's motion for

summary judgment In law, a summary judgment (also judgment as a matter of law or summary disposition) is a judgment entered by a court A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes ...

and the plaintiff appealed.

Opinion of the Court

Majority opinion

In an effort to limit a potential runaway tort and to avoid the burdensome case-by-case analysis warned of in ''

Dillon v. Legg ''Dillon v. Legg'', case citation, 68 Cal. 2d 728 (1968), was a legal case, case decided by the Supreme Court of California that established the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress. To date, it is the most persuasive decision of th ...

'', the court refined the necessary elements of a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress first enunciated in ''Dillon'' into a

bright-line rule A bright-line rule (or bright-line test) is a clearly defined rule or standard, composed of objective factors, which leaves little or no room for varying interpretation. The purpose of a bright-line rule is to produce predictable and consistent ...

: *The plaintiff must be closely related to the injury victim, *The plaintiff must be present at the scene at the time of the injury, and must be aware that the victim is being injured, and *The plaintiff must suffer emotional distress as a result Based on the strict formulation of the second element, the court ruled that the plaintiff could not recover because she was not present at the scene and not aware of the injury at the time of the accident.

Kaufman's concurrence

Justice Kaufman's concurrence criticized both the rigid rules of the majority opinion and the flexible guidelines advocated by Justice Broussard's dissent. Kaufman bemoaned the guidelines of ''Dillon v. Legg'' as hopelessly arbitrary, and advocated a return to the zone of danger rule as enunciated in ''Amaya v. Home Ice, Fuel & Supply Co.''

Mosk's dissent

Justice Mosk's dissent voiced substantial agreement with Broussard's dissent, but also made a point of criticizing the majority's perspective on precedent. Mosk noted that a long list of California cases, including '' Archibald v. Braverman'', '' Krouse v. Graham'', '' Molien v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals'', and ''State Rubbish Association v. Siliznoff'' evidenced an enduring theme of expanding tort liability for emotional distress.

Broussard's dissent

Justice Broussard's dissent criticized the rigid rules imposed by the majority decision as arbitrary and something that can inevitably lead to under-compensation for real emotional distress injuries. Instead of bright line rules, Broussard advocated that liability be determined by the application of well developed tort principles of

foreseeability In law and insurance, a proximate cause is an event sufficiently related to an injury that the courts deem the event to be the cause of that injury. There are two types of causation in the law: cause-in-fact, and proximate (or legal) cause. Ca ...

and

duty A duty (from "due" meaning "that which is owing"; fro, deu, did, past participle of ''devoir''; la, debere, debitum, whence "debt") is a commitment or expectation to perform some action in general or if certain circumstances arise. A duty may ...

.''Thing'', 48 Cal.3d at 680-88

References

External links

Text of opinion from Google Scholar
{{United States tort case law Negligence case law 1989 in United States case law Supreme Court of California case law United States tort case law 1989 in California