Facts
- Wanda M. Cooley was using her home telephone during a severe storm when uninsulated high-voltage electric wires owned by Public Service Company of New Hampshire broke and fell.
- A fallen electric wire contacted the telephone system’s messenger wire, creating an electrical arc that burned through the messenger and partially through the telephone cable until current shut off automatically by circuit breaker.
- The telephone system (owned by New England Telephone & Telegraph Company) was grounded and equipped with protective devices intended to divert foreign currents; there was no evidence these devices failed.
- Cooley heard a loud explosive noise in the receiver and experienced violent agitation of the telephone diaphragm; she fell and later developed traumatic neurosis and related symptoms attributed by medical testimony to fright or nervous shock.
- Cooley pursued negligence claims against both utilities; the jury found for the telephone company and against Public Service Company for $10,000.
- The trial court ordered a remittitur; both sides filed exceptions, and the case was reviewed by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Issues
- Whether the electric utility was negligent for failing to adopt additional protective measures to prevent fright-based injury to a telephone user when the suggested measures would materially increase the risk of electrocution to persons on the street.
- Whether a duty of care extends to preventing an unusual psychic injury where preventing it would require precautions that create a greater and more immediate danger to others.
Decision
- The court ordered judgment for Public Service Company, setting aside the plaintiff’s recovery.
- The court concluded the plaintiff failed to show any practicable precaution that would prevent her injury without increasing the immediate danger of serious physical harm to the public.
- The court treated the risk to pedestrians from energized fallen wires as obvious and immediate, and the risk of the plaintiff’s injury as remote and rare.
- The court rejected a theory that would subject the defendant to conflicting standards of care depending on which group’s safety was prioritized.
Legal Principles
- Negligence duty and breach may be assessed by comparing the magnitude and likelihood of competing risks affected by proposed precautions.
- A defendant is not required to take precautions to prevent a remote, unusual emotional injury when those precautions would increase an obvious and immediate risk of grave physical harm to others.
- A plaintiff must produce evidence of a feasible protective alternative that reduces the complained-of risk without unreasonably increasing danger to other persons.
Conclusion
The court held the electric utility not liable because the plaintiff’s proposed safety measures would have reduced a rare fright-based harm to telephone users only by increasing the immediate risk of electrocution to people in public areas, and the plaintiff did not establish a feasible safer alternative.