## Facts

- Emma Johnson was a patient at Hudson River State Hospital, a state facility, from 1960.
- In August 1970, another patient named Emma Johnson died; hospital staff misidentified the decedent and sent a telegram to Emma’s sister stating that Emma had died and directing the family to make burial arrangements and arrange for an undertaker to take the body.
- Fleeter Thorpe, Emma’s daughter, relied on the telegram, contacted an undertaker, and arranged a wake and burial; the undertaker retrieved and transported the wrong body from the hospital.
- Thorpe and her aunt viewed the body and noticed changes in appearance but proceeded; at the wake Thorpe realized the body was not her mother’s.
- Thorpe became severely distressed and later reported significant emotional symptoms, including anxiety, depression, nightmares, and inability to work for about 11 days.
- Emma Johnson (Thorpe’s mother) was alive in another wing of the hospital throughout the events.
- Thorpe and the aunt filed claims seeking funeral expenses, damages for emotional harm, and punitive damages based on the hospital’s negligent misinformation.

## Issues

1. Whether a hospital’s negligent false notification of a patient’s death to next of kin permits recovery for serious emotional harm absent physical impact or a contemporaneous threat of bodily harm.
2. Whether recovery should be limited to pecuniary loss where emotional distress is alleged from negligent death notification.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division’s limitation of Thorpe’s recovery to pecuniary losses.
- The court held that Thorpe could recover compensatory damages for serious emotional harm caused by the hospital’s negligent misinformation about her mother’s death.
- The court left undisturbed the dismissal of the aunt’s claim because it was not pursued further on appeal.
- Punitive damages remained denied.

## Legal Principles

- Negligent infliction of emotional distress may be actionable without physical impact or threat where the defendant owes a specific duty to the plaintiff and the breach foreseeably and directly causes serious emotional harm.
- A hospital has a duty, borne or assumed as part of its responsibilities, to notify the proper next of kin accurately of a patient’s death; negligent performance of that duty can support recovery for resulting emotional injury.
- Liability for emotional distress may be confined to narrowly defined situations where the risk of serious emotional harm is especially foreseeable and the causal link to the negligent act is direct, such as erroneous death notifications and death-related arrangements.

## Conclusion

The court recognized that a state hospital’s negligent false death notification to a patient’s daughter breached a specific duty to next of kin and foreseeably caused serious, directly traceable emotional harm, making compensatory recovery available even without physical impact, while leaving punitive damages and unrelated dismissed claims intact.


Johnson v. State, 37 N.Y.2d 378, 372 N.Y.S.2d 638, 334 N.E.2d 590 (N.Y. 1975)