NCJ Number
117528
Date Published
1989
Length
107 pages
Annotation
This paper traces the history of one type of injury dominated by female plaintiffs: the law's treatment of physical harms induced by fright or nervous shock to a plaintiff due to the defendant's negligence.
Abstract
Accounts of the legal handling of fright-based injuries offered by Victorian-era jurists, traditionalist legal scholars of the first two decades of the 20th century, and a Freudian medical legal commentator from the 1940's are re-examined. Prior to the case of Amaya v. Home Fuel and Supply (1962), psychic and physical harm resulting from fright or nervous shock relating to the negligent acts of another was not deemed compensable by the courts. Lillian Amaya watched from a distance of 80 feet as her 17-month-old son was crushed beneath the wheels of a negligently driven ice truck in the driveway of her home. Being 7 months pregnant at the time, she claimed that the trauma of the event produced physical shock and other bodily injuries. The intermediate appellate court ruled in favor of Amaya, although the ruling was reversed by the California Supreme Court. Five years later in Dillon v. Legg, however, the California Supreme Court, in a case similar to "Amaya," overruled "Amaya" in deciding in favor of the plaintiff. The paper concludes with a contemporary feminist perspective on this decision. 174 footnotes.