Emotional injuries are problematic. They are difficult to prove for attorneys and difficult to evaluate for juries. Emotional injuries that are predicated upon witnessing someone else’s injury are even more problematic. In addition to ascertaining the validity of such a claim, a determination must be made whether the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty in the first place. If so, another determination must be made whether the relationship between the injured party and the plaintiff who witnessed his or her injury is one that gives rise to a cause of action. It is this element that has created the most confusion.
The zone-of-danger rule allows a person who is threatened with bodily harm resulting from a defendant’s negligence to recover for emotional distress from viewing the death or serious injury of his immediate family.1 As the Court of Appeals explained in the 1984 case Bovsun v. Sanperi,2 “[i]t is premised on the traditional negligence concept that by unreasonably endangering the plaintiff’s physical safety the defendant has breached a duty owed to him or her for which he or she should recover all damages sustained including those occasioned by witnessing the suffering of an immediate family member who is also injured by defendant’s conduct.”3
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