Opinion
No. CV 07 5001872 S
December 20, 2007
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
This decision addresses the issue of whether emotional distress damages are recoverable under an ordinary claim of professional negligence or negligent misrepresentation by a realtor who procured purportedly unsuitable tenants for a client.
The plaintiff has brought a four-count complaint asserting causes of action for a violation of the Connecticut Unfair Trades Practices Act (CUTPA); breach of contract; realtor malpractice; and negligent misrepresentation, respectively. The malpractice and negligent misrepresentation counts incorporate allegations contained in the CUTPA count which aver that the lessees, negligently obtained by the defendants, failed to abide by their lease with the plaintiff and vandalized the premises. In paragraph 22 of both counts, the plaintiff claims that the defendants' negligence caused her emotional distress.
The defendants request that the third and fourth counts be revised to remove these assertions of emotional distress because such nonpecuniary damages cannot be awarded for a realtor's malpractice or negligent misrepresentation concerning the realtor's competency to locate suitable, prospective tenants. The court agrees with this position.
It should be noted that the plaintiff makes no claim that she was physically assaulted by the wayward tenants. Her only claim for emotional harm is that derived from the economic loss she sustained at the hands of her miscreant tenants.
Foreseeability "provides virtually no limit on liability for nonphysical harm." Clohessy v. Bachelor, 237 Conn. 31, 42 (1996). Consequently, "reliance on forseeability of injury alone" is inadequate to create a right to recovery "for an intangible injury." Id. "Many harms are quite literally `foreseeable' yet for pragmatic reasons, no recovery is allowed." Id., 45. "The problem for the law is to limit the legal consequences of wrongs to a controllable degree." Id., 46. "There are ample policy concerns for setting limits . . . establishing the permissible instances of recovery." Id., 50. "[I]t would be an entirely unreasonable burden on all human activity if the defendant who has endangered one person were to be compelled to pay for the lacerated feelings of every other person disturbed by reason of it." Id.
In Clohessy v. Bachelor, supra, our Supreme Court for the first time recognized a viable cause of action for bystander emotional distress but only by imposing "specific limitations" on the circumstances under which such liability can arise. Id., 51. For bystander distress, those conditions are 1) that the plaintiff must be closely related to the victim; 2) the bystander distress must be caused by "contemporaneous sensory perception of the event or conduct" that caused injury to the victim; 3) the injury to the close, family member must result in death or serious physical injury; and 4) the bystander's emotional response must be serious and objectively "normal." Id., 52-54.
Under our common law, loss of or damage to personal property, through tile negligent actions of another, is insufficient to permit recovery for the emotional reaction of the owner to that loss or damage. Myers v. Hartford, 84 Conn.App. 395, 402 (2004). This bar to recovery exists even for the death of a cherished pet. Id.
Economic damage, standing alone, generates no compensable claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress. Perodeau v. Hartford, 259 Conn. 729, 750 (2002); Parsons v. United Technologies Corp., 243 Conn. 66, 88-89 (1997). This is true even where the emotional injury claim stems from the wrongful loss of one's employment. Id. To some extent, every breach of contract or economic deprivation will result in hurt feelings, disappointment, frustration, or betrayal. Allowing recovery for emotional distress concomitant with routine economic loss risks "flooding the courts with `specious and fraudulent claims'; problems of proof of the damages suffered; exposing the defendant to an endless number of claims; and [imposing] economic burdens on industry." Clohessy v. Bachelor, supra, 50.
The court recognizes that the wanton destruction of one's property is likely to provoke anger, consternation, and stress, but the plaintiff's claims in this case are no more compelling than the sorrow of the mistress who lost her beloved dog in Myers v. Hartford, supra; the employee who lost his job in Parsons v. United Technologies Corp., supra; and those bereaved family members who cannot satisfy the strict limitations of Clohessy v. Bachelor, supra.
Therefore, the court overrules the plaintiff's objections to the defendants' requests to revise the third and fourth counts of the complaint to eliminate the allegations of emotional distress.