Emotional Distress

This category of emotional distress includes certain types of fears. The fright that accompanies a dog bite or a radiation burn, for example, may be said to result from an injury because it arises without any intervening cause, such as a medical examination. See The Lord Derby, 17 F. 265, 267 (ED La. 1883) (“To many people the shock to the system resulting from the most insignificant bite of a dog drawing blood is such that no money compensation is adequate”). The passage in the Restatement deeming compensable “emotional disturbance resulting from the bodily harm or from the conduct which causes it,” §456(a), refers, as the official commentary makes clear, to this sort of instantaneous emotional trauma arising from the tortious act. See Id., Comment e (“Thus one who is struck by a negligently driven automobile and suffers a broken leg may recover not only for his pain, grief, or worry resulting from the broken leg, but also for his fright at seeing the car about to hit him”).

Other, less immediate fears also might qualify as pain and suffering, but only if they are the direct result of an injury. See Id., §456, Comment d (clarifying that recovery is “not limited to immediate emotional disturbance accompanying the bodily harm, or following at once from it, but includes also subsequent emotional disturbance brought about by the bodily harm itself”).

Applying these standards to the instant case, I do not think the brooding, contemplative fear the respondents allege can be called a direct result of their asbestosis. Unlike shortness of breath or other discomfort asbestosis may cause, their fear does not arise from the presence of disease in their lungs. Instead, the respondents’ fear is the product of learning from a doctor about their asbestosis, receiving information (perhaps at a much later time) about the conditions that correlate with this disease, and then contemplating how these possible conditions might affect their lives.