HELENA, Mont. (Legal Newsline) – Montana plaintiffs can’t claim emotional distress in negligence lawsuits when their property is damaged or lost.
The state Supreme Court ruled that way on Aug. 3, rejecting plaintiff Randall Childress’ claim that Costco’s negligence allowed his car to be stolen and triggered his post-traumatic stress disorder.
Damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress – a.k.a. parasitic damages – are not appropriate, the court ruled in answering a question posed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Though the damages may result from disputes involving “the quiet enjoyment of land,” they don’t belong in property damage cases, Justice Jim Rice wrote. The court rejected a federal judge’s contention that there isn’t “much of a difference” between real and personal property.
“While these off-the-cuff remarks are not entirely accurate, they are not entirely without merit, either,” Rice wrote.
“A review of our precedent reveals that we have differentiated between real and personal property, and recognized the uniqueness of real property, extending parasitic emotional distress damages to the loss of the use and enjoyment of land; but we have never explicitly foreclosed parasitic emotional distress as an element of damage for loss to personal property.”
Childress and his wife took their vehicle to Costco’s tire center in Missoula in September 2016, but a Costco employee gave the keys to a man there who claimed to be the Childresses’ son.
The vehicle was found after the man drove off in it, but the perpetrator took a handgun, ammunition, documents with the Childresses’ home address on them and keys to the home.
Randall said this caused his PTSD, a result of his military service in Vietnam that he had successfully treated, to reoccur. He felt stress, paranoia, fear, irritability and anxiety, among other problems, and received 17 treatment sessions.
The Childresses sued and won a $65,000 verdict in federal court. Most of that was for “unspecified, non-property damages” on their negligence claim, which Costco appealed.
The Ninth Circuit certified a question regarding Montana’s recognition of parasitic damages. The state Supreme Court noted that the handgun was not an heirloom and the rest of the stolen property was not “so intrinsically intertwined with the Childress family dynamic that without these articles their personal identity would be irreparably impacted.”
Justice Rice added: “While the Childresses now offer a loss of use and enjoyment of real property argument, it appears this argument was not made to the (trial or appeals court) and is not part of the question posed in this certification request.”