Trial News

In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of California held that a family member can claim bystander emotional distress damages even if they don’t immediately know who contributed to their loved one’s injuries or how. (Downey v. City of Riverside, 55 P.3d 1109 (Cal. July 22, 2024).)

Malyah Vance was in a car crash while driving in Riverside, Calif. Her mother, Jayde Downey, had been giving her directions by Bluetooth through the car’s infotainment system and heard Vance gasp, then the sound of vehicles colliding, glass shattering, and tires skidding. Vance fell silent. Several minutes later, a passerby told Downey, who was still on the call, that he was trying to find her daughter’s pulse. He then told Downey that Vance was breathing again and asked her to hang up and call 911. Vance survived but suffered serious injuries.

Downey sued the driver of the other car involved in the collision, as well as the city of Riverside and the owners of private property adjacent to the intersection for allowing dangerous conditions that contributed to the crash. Among other claims, the complaint sought recovery for emotional distress Downey suffered when she heard the crash and surmised that her daughter had been gravely injured.

California courts have long recognized a plaintiff’s right to recover for emotional distress suffered from witnessing injuries, as long as the plaintiff and victim are close relatives and the plaintiff was present when the injury happened and was aware that the event was causing injury (Dillon v. Legg, 68 Cal. 2d 728 (1968)). The trial court here found that Downey could not claim negligent infliction of emotional distress because she was not present and did not know at the moment of the crash that the road design, speed limit, and a property owners’ overgrown landscaping contributed to the collision. An appellate court affirmed.

Reversing and remanding, the California Supreme Court cited Thing v. La Chusa, 771 P.2d 814 (Cal. 1989), as “the prototypical case” in which “a parent watches as a negligent driver collides with her child. The parent, who is contemporaneously aware of both the driver’s negligent conduct and the child’s resulting injury, is permitted to sue the driver for her emotional trauma. The facts of [Downey] require us to consider a new question about emotional distress recovery: What if the plaintiff is aware that injury has been inflicted on the victim, but not of the defendant’s role in causing the injury?”

The court reasoned that “it is awareness of an event that is injuring the victim—not awareness of the defendant’s role in causing the injury—that matters.” The court noted, “The emotional trauma that comes from witnessing . . . an accident exists regardless of whether the plaintiff is aware at the time of the accident of all the individuals or entities that have contributed to the accident through their conduct.”

The court said the defense wants to “require awareness” of how the defendants contributed to the crash in order to limit “the potential scope of negligence liability, particularly in an age when technology makes it possible to perceive more events unfolding in more places than ever before. . . . [C]urrent telecommunications technology has created more scenarios where potential plaintiffs might witness a loved one being injured. [The defendants] have not explained how requiring contemporaneous understanding of how each tortfeasor has contributed to the injury is a necessary, fair, or administrable limitation on liability.”

Gregory Rizio—who, along with Eric Ryanen, represented the plaintiffs—said, “This is a good ruling and a win for plaintiffs. There was always this question in negligent infliction of emotional distress cases: Did you actually have to see the injury happen? Or was experiencing enough? This age of technology allows people to experience a traumatic event and understand that someone is being hurt, even if they don’t see it. The lower courts ruled that you had to know some element of negligence was taking place and know the facts. The California Supreme Court said, ‘No, you don’t,’ and that is big.”