requiring “medically verifiable manifestations of severe emotional distress” to limit false or magnified claims and concluding that plaintiff’s reasonable fears were “not severe enough to justify compensation through the courts”
How later courts described this case
- requiring “medically verifiable manifestations of severe emotional distress” to limit false or magnified claims and concluding that plaintiff’s reasonable fears were “not severe enough to justify compensation through the courts”
- direct victim's manifestation of severe emotional distress caused by a doctor's negligence must be medically verifiable
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JUSTICE RAKOWSKI, specially concurring:
I agree with both of my colleagues that, because Eileen Majca was outside of the "window of anxiety,” summary judgment is proper.
I, therefore, would not address which standard is appropriate. Under either, plaintiffs’ claims must fail.
The decisive utterance of this case is that summary judgment is affirmed because plaintiff is outside the "window of anxiety.” Further, because my colleagues cannot agree on which standard is proper, any discussion of this issue does not even rise to the level of obiter dictum.