Nutter v. Frisbie Memorial Hospital
474 A.2d 584, 124 N.H. 791, 1984 N.H. LEXIS 334 (1984)
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Rule of Law:
A plaintiff seeking to recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress as a bystander must contemporaneously perceive the injury-causing event with their own senses. Recovery is denied if the plaintiff learns of the injury after the fact or sees the victim at a later time.
Facts:
- Amanda Nutter, a three-month-old infant, was born on December 28, 1979.
- On March 28, 1980, Amanda became ill and was examined by her pediatrician, Dr. DeJohn, who diagnosed her with pneumonia and allowed her to return home.
- On March 31, 1980, Amanda developed severe complications while in the care of a babysitter.
- Amanda was transported by ambulance to Frisbie Memorial Hospital, arriving at 2:50 p.m.
- Her parents, alerted by the babysitter, arrived at the hospital shortly after the ambulance.
- Amanda died at 3:18 p.m., and her parents were immediately advised of her death and taken to view her body.
Procedural Posture:
- The administrator of Amanda Nutter's estate and her parents filed a complaint against Dr. DeJohn and Frisbie Memorial Hospital in the Superior Court, a state trial court.
- Count III of the complaint was a separate action by Amanda's parents seeking damages for their own emotional distress.
- By agreement of the parties, the Superior Court transferred a question of law directly to the state's highest court to determine if the parents had a valid cause of action under Count III.
- The case came before the state's highest court on this certified question before any ruling on the merits of Count III had been made by the trial court.
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Issue:
Do parents have a cause of action for negligent infliction of emotional distress resulting from alleged medical malpractice when they did not contemporaneously perceive the malpractice or its effects, but instead arrived at the hospital shortly before their child's death and were immediately informed of it?
Opinions:
Majority - Brock, J.
No. Parents do not have a cause of action for negligent infliction of emotional distress if they did not contemporaneously perceive the negligent act or the resulting injury. The court reaffirmed its holding in Corso v. Merrill, which established that bystander recovery is limited to plaintiffs who suffer a direct emotional impact from witnessing the accident firsthand through their sensory and contemporaneous perception. The court reasoned that this boundary is necessary for public policy reasons, primarily to prevent the imposition of remote, unforeseeable, and infinite liability on defendants. Allowing recovery for parents who learn of their child's death after the fact, even moments later, would create a cause of action in nearly every instance of wrongful death, which would be an unmanageable and unpredictable expansion of tort liability. The court emphasized that the law must draw a clear line to limit the legal consequences of wrongs to a controllable degree.
Analysis:
This decision strictly construes and solidifies the contemporaneous perception rule for bystander negligent infliction of emotional distress claims. It demonstrates a judicial preference for bright-line rules that limit liability, even at the cost of denying recovery to plaintiffs with genuine and severe emotional injuries. The case significantly narrows the scope of recovery in medical malpractice scenarios, where the negligent act often occurs outside the presence of family members. The ruling effectively distinguishes the direct trauma of witnessing an event from the profound grief of learning about it, holding that only the former is compensable under this tort theory.
