denying motion to dismiss, despite long duration between defendant’s harmful acts and decedent’s suicide and indications that decedent planned her suicide, and explaining that “[w]hen the decedent acts under the conditions expounded in [the Restatement (Second) ] § 455, he is not acting with volition, and his suicide, therefore, does not breach the chain of causation.”
How later courts described this case
- denying motion to dismiss, despite long duration between defendant’s harmful acts and decedent’s suicide and indications that decedent planned her suicide, and explaining that “[w]hen the decedent acts under the conditions expounded in [the Restatement (Second) ] § 455, he is not acting with volition, and his suicide, therefore, does not breach the chain of causation.”
- upholding the sufficiency of a complaint that alleged defendant's actions resulted in "the creation of a delirium or insanity"
- where the court found that the appellant’s intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress claims “clearly were not parasitic to the wrongful death claims even though they arose out of the same circumstances.”
- noting exception to presence requirement where defendant sexually abused plaintiff's wife for several years and indirectly helped her commit suicide
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CARDINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
My problem with the court’s opinion is with the following sentence on page 31 referring to Coliseum Motor Co. v. Hester, 43 Wyo. 298 , 3 P.2d 105 (1931):
“This Court overcame those concerns when it adopted the mental distress torts.”
If “those concerns” refer to the “potential for excess verdicts” and the “possibility of feigned grief,” my position is that the court did not “[overcome] those concerns.” The court carved out an exception to the general rule of Coliseum Motor Co. that no recovery may be had for mental suffering and grief following the death of another by allowing recovery where plaintiff either is present and views the incident causing injury or death or comes upon it immediately thereafter. Absent this or the special circumstances of this case, there still can be no recovery for grief or mental suffering resulting from the death of another as expressed in Coliseum Motor Co.