## Facts

- In 1958, Campbell County Memorial Hospital in Gillette, Wyoming, delivered two baby girls to Jean Morgan and Polly Leyva.
- While both mothers were unconscious, hospital staff switched the newborns in the nursery and failed to correct the mistake.
- Each mother went home with the other’s child; the separation of biological mother and daughter lasted forty-three years.
- The hospital and its predecessor operated the facility, and the staff acted within the scope of their employment.
- In 2001, DNA testing revealed the switch; Shirley Larsen located her biological mother, Polly Leyva.
- Larsen and Leyva sued the hospital operator for negligence, alleging only emotional harms (including counseling expenses) and no physical injury.

## Issues

1. Whether, under Wyoming negligence law, a mother and daughter separated for decades by a hospital’s negligent newborn switch may recover when the only alleged damages are severe emotional distress and related counseling expenses, without physical injury.

## Decision

- The Wyoming Supreme Court answered the certified question “yes.”
- The court held the plaintiffs may maintain a negligence action seeking recovery solely for emotional distress and counseling expenses, despite the absence of physical injury.
- The case returned to the federal district court for further proceedings consistent with that answer.

## Legal Principles

- Wyoming negligence law may permit recovery for severe emotional distress without physical impact or physical injury in limited circumstances.
- A duty to avoid causing serious emotional harm may arise from a special relationship, including the hospital–patient relationship in childbirth and infant identification.
- Liability for stand-alone emotional damages is constrained to cases where severe, genuine distress is highly foreseeable, the causal link is direct, and the risk of speculative claims is controlled by limiting principles.
- Foreseeability and related policy considerations (certainty of injury, closeness of connection, moral blame, prevention of future harm, and burden of duty) support recognizing a duty where negligent performance predictably disrupts the parent-child relationship.

## Conclusion

Wyoming allowed a negligence claim for purely emotional damages where a hospital’s newborn misidentification foreseeably caused severe, demonstrable emotional distress within a special hospital–patient context, even though no physical injury was alleged.


Larsen v. Banner Health Sys., 81 P.3d 196 (Wyo. 2003)