# Norwest v. Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital

> Oregon Supreme Court · October 5, 1982 · 293 Or. 543

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9544904

## Case

- **Full name:** NORWEST, Petitioner on Review, v. PRESBYTERIAN INTERCOMMUNITY HOSPITAL Et Al, Respondents on Review
- **Court:** Oregon Supreme Court
- **Decided:** October 5, 1982
- **Citations:** 293 Or. 543; 652 P.2d 318; 1982 Ore. LEXIS 1030
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Tanzer
- **Judges:** Lent, Linde, Tanzer, Campbell, Carson
- **Cited by:** 127 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9544904

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- noting general “rule that negligence alone, as a reason to shift the burden of a resulting loss, has not been deemed so grievous as to hold the negligent actor liable beyond the immediate victim’s injury to others who suffer a loss only in consequence of that injury’
- noting that the Oregon Supreme Court has “not yet extended liability for ordinary negligence to solely psychic or emotional injury not accompanying any actual or threatened physical harm or any injury to another legally protected interest”
- recognizing the “difficulties” with linking recovery to formal relationships “in a society whose practices and common assumptions about * * * relationships are rapidly changing”
- explaining that liability for emotional distress must have “a legal source besides its foreseeability”

## Opinion text

*570 TANZER, J.,
concurring.
I concur generally, but add these few words of qualification.
The majority reasons that the anticipated effect of our holding on insurance rates is immaterial to our decision and I agree. I do not wish to be understood, however, as holding that economic realities relevant to assignment of risk are never relevant in making policy judgments as discussed in Ore-Ida Foods v. Indian Head, 290 Or 909 , 627 P2d 469 (1981).
Also, I am hesitant to create judicially an entitlement as unpredictable, formless and limitless as compensation of children for psychic losses due to nonfatal injury to their parents. Unlike the courts, the legislature has the power to create not only new bases for recovery but also appropriate procedures to account for all affected interests. The legislature did so with the current wrongful death statutes, for example. ORS 30.020. Thus, I do not necessarily reject the Iowa approach; rather I recognize that practical limits sometimes render judicial power an unsuitable means for the recognition of new theories of recovery.
Campbell and Carson, JJ., join in this opinion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9544904. Public record. Not legal advice.