Graves v. Estabrook

Summary

The New Hampshire Supreme Court held that an unmarried cohabitant who was engaged to the decedent could potentially recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress after contemporaneously witnessing the fatal collision. The court rejected a categorical rule limiting recovery to relatives by blood or marriage and instead applied a foreseeability-based analysis focused on the closeness and quality of the relationship. The dismissal was reversed and the case remanded.

Holdings

1. An unmarried cohabitant or fiancée may recover damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress when the plaintiff contemporaneously observes the defendant's negligence causing the victim's death or serious injury and has a sufficiently close, stable, enduring, substantial, mutually supportive, and genuinely intimate relationship with the victim.
2. The complaint was reasonably susceptible to a construction that would support recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress and therefore should not have been dismissed.

Questions Presented

1. Whether an unmarried fiancée who lived with the decedent may recover for negligent infliction of emotional distress after contemporaneously witnessing the collision that caused the decedent's death.
2. Whether the relationship element of New Hampshire's bystander negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress doctrine is limited to relationships based on blood or marriage.
3. Whether the complaint adequately pleaded facts supporting a close relationship and a foreseeable emotional injury sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded