## Facts

- Bridget Lee and her daughter were struck in an automobile collision caused by an unknown hit-and-run driver.
- Both Lee and her daughter sustained physical injuries; Lee witnessed her daughter’s suffering and her daughter died about an hour later.
- Lee and her husband’s uninsured motorist carriers (State Farm and Allstate) paid policy limits on the child’s wrongful-death claim.
- Lee sued to recover for her own physical injuries and for emotional distress based on witnessing her child’s suffering and death; her husband sued for loss of consortium.
- State Farm intervened on its own behalf, and Allstate defended in the name of the unknown motorist (“John Doe”).
- The dispute on review concerned whether Lee’s negligent infliction of emotional distress claim was barred by Georgia’s impact rule.

## Issues

1. Whether Georgia’s impact rule bars a negligent infliction of emotional distress claim by a mother who was physically injured in the same collision that mortally injured her child and who witnessed the child’s suffering and death.

## Decision

- The Georgia Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and the trial court’s grant of summary judgment against Lee on her emotional-distress claim.
- The court held that, under these circumstances, Lee could pursue negligent infliction of emotional distress damages arising from witnessing her child’s mortal injury.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- Under Georgia’s general “impact rule,” recovery for emotional distress based on negligent conduct requires an impact on the plaintiff, and that impact must result in physical injury.
- A parent who is physically impacted and injured in the same negligent incident that seriously injures and kills the parent’s child, and who contemporaneously witnesses the child’s suffering and death, is not treated as a mere bystander for purposes of applying the impact rule.
- In that shared-impact, parent-child setting, the policy concerns supporting the impact rule (including limiting speculative or fraudulent claims and constraining liability) do not justify categorically denying an emotional-distress claim as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

The Georgia Supreme Court recognized a narrow, fact-dependent qualification to the impact rule, permitting a physically injured mother to proceed with a negligent infliction of emotional distress claim based on witnessing her child’s fatal injury in the same collision.


Lee v. State Farm Mut. Ins. Co., 533 S.E.2d 82 (Ga. 2000)