Krouse v. Graham, 19 Cal.3d 59

Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

 (1977), was a case

Legal case

A legal case is a dispute between opposing parties resolved by a court, or by some equivalent legal process. A legal case may be either civil or criminal...

 decided by the Supreme Court of California

Supreme Court of California

The Supreme Court of California is the highest state court in California. It is headquartered in San Francisco and regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts.-Composition:...

 ruling that a lack of visual perception of an accident did not necessarily preclude recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress

Negligent infliction of emotional distress

The tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress 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 a legal duty to use reasonable care to avoid causing...

.

Factual background

Plaintiff Benjamin Krouse was in his parked car outside of his house. The plaintiff's wife was removing groceries from the car. The car driven by defendant Homer Graham collided with the parked car, injuring the plaintiff and killing his wife. The plaintiff did not see the car hit his wife, but he could see Graham's car approaching and he knew that his wife was is its path. The plaintiff sued for wrongful death and emotional distress, and the trial court returned a verdict for the plaintiff. The defendant appealed from a denied motion for a new trial.

Decision

The defendant alleged error in a jury instruction that said that Krouse could recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress by simply being present at the scene of the accident. The court needed to determine whether the absence of visual perception of the accident precluded recovery under the criteria enunciated in the 1968 decision Dillon v. Legg

Dillon v. Legg

Dillon v. Legg, 68 Cal. 2d 728 , was a case decided by the Supreme Court of California that established the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress...

. Dillon required the "sensory and contemporaneous observance" of the accident. The court ruled that, despite not having seen the impact, Krouse fully perceived the accident because he knew where his wife was seconds before the impact, he saw the car coming, and he knew that she must have been injured in the accident. For the first time in California, the Supreme Court held that plaintiffs, in a statutory action for wrongful death, may recover so-called “non-economic” damages: damages for the loss of the deceased’s “love, companionship, comfort, care, assistance, protection, affection, society, [and] moral support.”

Related cases

A similar holding was made in the 1969 case Archibald v. Braverman

Archibald v. Braverman

Archibald v. Braverman, 275 Cal. App. 2d 253 , was a case decided by the California Court of Appeals that first ruled that visual perception of an accident was not a necessary prerequisite to recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress under the criteria enunciated in Dillon v. Legg. ...

, but Archibald was overruled by the 1989 case Thing v. La Chusa

Thing v. La Chusa

Thing v. La Chusa, 48 Cal. 3d 644 , was a case decided by the Supreme Court of California that limited the scope of the tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress...

. Thing, however, did not overrule the holding of Krouse.