Catherine M Sharkey, ‘Public Nuisance as Modern Business Tort: A New Unified Framework for Liability for Economic Harms’, 70 DePaul Law Review (forthcoming, 2021), available at SSRN. More than a hundred years ago, in Mitchell v Rochester Railway Co, 151 NY 107, 108 (1896), New York’s highest Court denied recovery to a plaintiff who had being negligently charged by a team of horses. Although the plaintiff was rendered unconscious and suffered a miscarriage, the Court held that she could not recover for ‘mere fright’. The court excluded recovery even though the team of horses ‘came so close to the plaintiff that she stood between the horses’ heads when they were stopped’ (P 108). The court reasoned: cases had not historically allowed recovery for fright or shock; if recovery were established ‘it would naturally result in a flood of litigation … a wide field would be opened for fictitious or speculative claims’; and ‘damages were too remote’. Today, notwithstanding these historical worries, most authorities would permit recovery on the Mitchell line of facts … (more)
[Ellen Bublick, JOTWELL, 21 June]
First posted 2021-06-21 14:15:54
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