Plaintiff Who Hears Daughter's Crash and Is Aware Daughter Is Injured Need Not Know Dangerous Condition Caused Injury to Recover for Emotional Distress

In Downey v. City of Riverside, published July 22, 2024, the California Supreme Court reversed the lower appellate court's ruling, which in turn affirmed the trial court's demurrer.  The plaintiff was talking to her daughter on a cellphone when she heard the sounds of her daughter's car crashing.  She called her daughter's name multiple times, and was interrupted when a bystander asked her to be quiet while he listened for the daughter's pulse.  After the crash, the plaintiff and daughter sued the driver of the other car in the collision, the city, and the owners of private property adjacent to the intersection where the crash occurred.  They alleged the city was partly at fault for the accident because the traffic markings, signals warnings, medians, and fixtures were defective and created a dangerous condition of public property.  The trial court and appellate court (in a split decision) opined that the mother could not sue for negligent infliction of emotional distress (bystander emotional distress) because although she had contemporaneous sensory awareness that her daughter was injured in the accident, she did not at that time have awareness that the city's alleged property condition had caused the accident.

The Supreme Court rejected the lower court's holding that a bystander emotional distress claim requires contemporaneous awareness that the defendant's negligence caused the injury.  Courts had derived that rule from cases involving medical malpractice, where the plaintiff will often not be aware that an injury is being caused to the loved one without also being aware the defendant healthcare practitioner is committing negligence.  But neither California Supreme Court precedent nor considerations of tort policy support requiring plaintiffs asserting bystander emotional distress claims to show contemporaneous perception of the causal link between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s injuries. Awareness of the injury-producing event, and the fact that it is causing injury, at the time it happens is sufficient.