J. J. LAPLACE, Jr.
v.
Mildrеd E. MINKS and Hardware Dealers Mutual Fire Insurance Company.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana, First Circuit.
Edward N. Engolio, Plaquemine, for appellant.
John S. White, Jr., of Kennon, White & Odom, Baton Rouge, for appellee.
Before ELLIS, LOTTINGER, LANDRY, REID and BAILES, JJ.
LOTTINGER, Judge.
This is a suit in damages by the petitioner, J. J. Laplace, Jr., versus Mildred E. Minks and her liability insurer, Hardware Deаlers Mutual Fire Insurance Company. The defendant filed an exception of no right or cause of action, which was maintained *896 by the Lower Court. The petitioner has taken an appeal.
Plaintiff alleges thаt on or about June 11, 1963, an automobile driven by Mildred E. Minks, the alleged insured of Hardware Dealers Mutual Fire Insurance Company, negligently struck his daughter, and that his dаughter died within an hour thereafter.
The claim in the instant suit is not for wrongful death or personal injuries of the plaintiff's daughter, as those claims have been asserted by plaintiff in a separate suit still pending in the district court.
The claim in the instant suit is that plaintiff sustained a severe and disabling heart attack on the mоrning following the death of his child, and all of the damages itemized in the petition are for petitioner's alleged disability, loss of earning capaсity and pain and suffering allegedly sustained by him when he learned of his daughter's accident and death.
Plaintiff's supplemental and amending petition alleges in part:
"* * * that the sight of his child in a horribly mutilated condition and the subsequent death of his child were of such a nature as to overwhelm plaintiff to such an extеnt as to render control of his physical being impossible and that this spectacle and sudden death caused plaintiff to sustain this acute postеrior myocardial infraction (sic)."
The defendant filed a peremptory exception alleging that the petition states no right or cause of action, as the jurisprudence of this state is well established to the fact that one person cannot recover damages for worries аnd mental suffering as a result of injuries to the person of another. The Lower Court maintained the exception filed by defendant, hence this apрeal by petitioner.
The petitioner cites Lynch v. Fisher, La.App.,
"In our opinion the original act of negligence alleged upon is so inextricably interwoven with the subsequent occurrences involved that it cannot be disassociated from any of them. Nor can we consider, in the light of the authorities cited, the act оf a temporarily insane or deranged person as being such a character of an independent, voluntary and responsible action аs would stand alone as the proximate cause of plaintiff's injury." Lynch v. Fisher et al., La.App.,34 So.2d 519 .
Of course, in the Lynch case the injuries to the petitioner were of a physical nature. Such is not the situation which is now before us. The damages sustained by petitioner was a result of shock and mental suffering.
There is a long line of cases commencing with Black v. Carrollton Railroad Company,
In Sperier v. Ott,
The jurisprudence regarding such actions was reviewed by this Court in Holland v. St. Paul Mercury Insurance Company,
The jurisprudence reviewed by this Court in the Holland case established clearly that in the situation before this Court in the instant case, the law has not permitted recovery to one for his own physical disability, loss of earning capacity, or pаin and suffering sustained by him as a result of either seeing the personal injuries of another, or learning of the death of another, against tortfeasors, whо are responsible for the personal injury or death of the other. In the Holland case, quoting from Volume 18, A.L.R.2d Anno. Damages, Section 7, Pages 239-240:
"Doubtlеss, the unanimous view of the American courts against permitting recovery in cases of this kind is influenced by considerations of practical justice. For a motorist who clashes with another vehicle in a crowded city square to be faced with claims by a score of near-by women for shockеxaggerated by stories of headache, nausea, loss of appetite, loss of weight, sleeplessness, night terrors, indigestion, and fear of going оut on the streetwould be inconceivable. The more important claims would be those of persons with weak hearts or high blood pressure, or of pregnant women. To have such claims strengthened by testimony of fright at possible injury to others would but add to the difficulty. The evidence of damages in all suсh cases is usually subjective evidence of the most unreliable sort. The medical testimony is only as to what the plaintiff had if she had what she says she had, all evidence which the defendant has no possible way to meet. Doctors testify pro and con, giving opinions on bare hypotheses of cаuse and effect. In a case like that in Hambrook v. Stokes Bros. (Eng.) (1925) 1 K.B. 141-C.A. supra, § 3, who could possibly say with certainty that the plaintiff's later partial miscarriage was caused by fright at the time of the accident or by some other circumstance? The doctors would disagree on their medicine as widely as the judges would disagree on their law. The plaintiff's doctor would give his opinion that the partial miscarriage resulted from nervous shock; the defendant's doctor would testify that it could not have resulted from shock but required physical injury or torsion; just as in a blood-pressure case the plaintiff's doctor will testify that the hypertension came from the shock and the defendant's doctor will say that essential hypertension cannot be thus increased."
Wе find no error on the part of the Lower Court in maintaining the defendant's exception of no right or cause of action, therefore the judgment of the Lower Court will be affirmed.
For the reasons hereinabove assigned, the judgment of the Lower Court will be affirmed, all costs of this appeal to be paid by petitioner.
Judgment affirmed.