Evelyn Atkinson, ‘Telegraph Torts: The Lost Lineage of the Public Service Corporation’, Michigan Law Review (forthcoming, 2023), available in draft at SSRN. Evelyn Atkinson’s article, ‘Telegraph Torts: The Lost Lineage of the Public Service Corporation’, offers a fascinating look at judicial decisions and statutes from the late 1800s and early 1900s that – unusually for the time – imposed liability for negligence causing ‘pure’ emotional distress. A typical fact pattern was as follows. A resident of a rural town would pay the local Western Union office to send an urgent telegram notifying the intended recipient that his close relative was dying. Because of Western Union’s negligence, the message was not transmitted. Bereft over having missed the last chance to commune with his dying relative, the intended recipient sued Western Union for damages. While claims of this sort often failed, courts and legislatures in Southern and Western states tended to validate them. The paper is an effort to answer why, of all actors that caused foreseeable serious distress through their negligent acts, telegraph companies were almost uniquely vulnerable to liability, but only in certain states …. (more)
[John CP Goldberg, JOTWELL, 5 January]
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