Goff, J.
Our existing common-law rules permit the recovery of damages for the negligent infliction of emotional distress only in three circumstances: The impact rule applies when the plaintiff suffered a direct physical impact resulting in physical injury. The modified-impact rule applies when the plaintiff suffered a direct physical impact and the defendant’s negligence resulted in the injury or death of a third party. Finally, the bystander rule applies when the plaintiff witnessed a relative’s death or severe injury or viewed the immediate aftermath of the incident.
This case requires us to examine the limitations imposed by these rules and to determine whether a narrow expansion of our common law is required to do justice and to meet the reasonable expectations of the millions of Hoosiers governed by our legal system. We conclude that it is. We thus hold that, when a caretaker assumes responsibility for a child, and when that caretaker owes a duty of care to the child’s parent or guardian, a claim against the caretaker for the negligent infliction of emotional distress may proceed when the parent or guardian later discovers, with irrefutable certainty, that the caretaker sexually abused that child and when that abuse severely impacted the parent or guardian’s emotional health.
Because Ruch has satisfied the elements of this rule, and while the trial court issued its decision without the benefit of our new test, we hold that summary judgment is improper for the School on Ruch’s emotional-distress claim. We also hold that the trial court improperly dismissed Ruch’s individual claim for economic damages. We therefore remand this case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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There’s no dispute here that Ruch’s emotional-distress claim falls beyond the confines of our modified-impact and bystander rules. The issue, as Ruch frames it, is whether we should broaden our jurisprudence by devising a “bright-line rule” to permit a damages claim “limited to the specific facts presented in this case.” Appellant’s Br. at 9. To limit emotional-distress claims to our existing legal framework, she contends, “imposes an impossible condition on [her] access to the courts and pursuit of a tort remedy.” Pet. to Trans. at 8. The School, of course, rejects the idea of expanding tortfeasor liability for the negligent infliction of emotional distress beyond our traditional rules. To “carve out an exception for parents of children who have been sexually molested,” the School insists, would “open the floodgates to claims” of a similar nature. Appellees’ Br. at 11.
We agree with Ruch that the extraordinary circumstances here warrant a proper remedy. In reaching this conclusion, we begin our discussion by examining the evolution of our common-law rules governing emotional-distress claims and the policy reasons behind those rules. See Pt. I, infra. We then go on to explain why the circumstances here compel further, albeit limited, change and why our narrow rule implicates no public-policy concerns. See Pt. II, infra. We then apply our new rule to Ruch’s claim, concluding that she satisfies the elements of our test. See Pt. III, infra. Finally, as a separate issue, we address—and ultimately reject—the School’s argument that Ruch failed to properly plead her claim for economic damages. See Pt. IV, infra.
I. Our common-law rules governing claims for the negligent infliction of emotional distress reflect a jurisprudence of incremental change.
Nationally, state courts have adopted a variety of tests to evaluate the merits of an emotional-distress claim. These tests may follow the impact rule, the modified-impact rule, the foreseeability rule, the zone-of-danger rule, or some other “bright line” rule. Ritchhart v. Indianapolis Pub. Sch., 812 N.E.2d 189, 192 (Ind. Ct. App. 2004).
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II. In some cases of child sexual abuse, a parent or guardian need not show proximity to the tortious act to raise an emotional-distress claim.
Each of the cases discussed above share a common factual trait: the commission of a violent tort in open view, directly observable by the plaintiff (whether the victim or the bystander) either when it occurs or soon after.
By contrast, the type of injury inflicted here—the sexual molestation of a child—typically occurs under a shroud of secrecy. See Steward v. State, 652 N.E.2d 490, 492 (Ind. 1995). And because the injury often remains hidden through “affirmative acts of concealment,” Sloan v. State, 947 N.E.2d 917, 921 (Ind. 2011), rarely—if ever—will a bystander witness the harm or stumble upon its “gruesome aftermath.” Still, this lack of proximity to the tortious act in no way reduces a parent or guardian’s shock of learning of the traumatic event. To the contrary, most everyone would agree that the “emotional trauma” experienced by a parent or guardian upon discovering that abuse—even indirectly—is so “compelling as to warrant compensation.” See Groves, 729 N.E.2d at 573.
Considering the “extraordinary circumstances surrounding the plaintiff’s discovery of the injury,” Bowen, 517 N.W.2d at 445, and considering the remedial limitations imposed by our existing legal framework, justice compels us to fashion a rule permitting a claim for damages limited to circumstances like those presented here. Under that rule, when a caretaker assumes responsibility for a child, and when that caretaker owes a duty of care to the child’s parent or guardian, a claim against the caretaker for the negligent infliction of emotional distress may proceed when the parent or guardian later discovers, with irrefutable certainty, that the caretaker sexually abused that child and when that abuse severely impacted the parent or guardian’s emotional health.
A. Our narrow rule includes sufficient protections against spurious claims and open-ended liability.
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Our carve-out exception to the bystander rule’s proximity requirement, we believe, includes sufficient protections against the public-policy concerns underlying an emotional-distress claim: spurious claims and open-ended liability. Of course, the “plaintiff’s proximity to the tortious conduct could serve to authenticate the plaintiff’s claim of emotional distress.” Bowen, 517 N.W.2d at 438 (emphasis added). But, under circumstances like those present here, we decline to impose it as a prerequisite to recovery for such claims.
To begin with, our rule today either meets or exceeds the first two requirements identified in Groves: (1) serious injury to the victim and (2) a close familial relationship between the victim and the plaintiff. [Footnote omitted.] See 729 N.E.2d at 572–73. Few would question whether the sexual abuse of a child injures that child. Indeed, our statutory law reflects this normative consensus…
Second, just as we’ve limited the class of potential plaintiffs, our carveout rule restricts the universe of tortfeasors. A parent or guardian’s claim for the negligent infliction of emotional distress may proceed only against those with a duty of care to the child’s parent or guardian, ensuring protection against open-ended liability.
Third, our test requires irrefutable certainty of the tort’s commission…
Finally, the discovery of the sexual abuse must have severely impacted the parent or guardian’s mental health. Evidence of severe impact may include mental-health treatment from a medical or psychiatric professional, a lack of basic day-to-day functioning, or dramatic changes to the parent or guardian’s demeanor toward family and friends.
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B. Our narrow rule follows the measured growth of our common law and trails a path charted by other states.
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III. Because Ruch satisfied the elements of our new rule, summary judgment is improper.
To reiterate our new rule, when a caretaker assumes responsibility for a child, and when that caretaker owes a duty of care to the child’s parent or guardian, a claim against the caretaker for the negligent infliction of emotional distress may proceed when the parent or guardian later discovers, with irrefutable certainty, that the caretaker sexually abused that child and when that abuse severely impacted the parent or guardian’s emotional health. To satisfy this rule, the parent or guardian must show (A) that the tortfeasor had a duty of care to the parent or guardian; (B) that there is irrefutable certainty of the act’s commission; (C) that the tortious act is one rarely, if ever, witnessed by the parent or guardian; and (D) that the abuse severely impacted the parent or guardian’s emotional health.
Ruch’s claim satisfies all four of these requirements.
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IV. The trial court improperly dismissed Ruch’s individual claim for economic damages.
We must also resolve Ruch’s claim for economic damages.
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Here, Ruch’s complaint for damages alleged that “[s]he has incurred expenses for the placement of [K.G.] in a chronic care facility.” App. Vol. 2, p. 17. This statement is sufficiently distinguishable from Ruch’s allegation that she “has suffered emotional distress as a result of the sexual abuse of her daughter, and lost the ability to care for her daughter in her home.” See id. In short, the “operative facts” of her complaint for economic damages sufficiently “compl[y] with the requirements of notice pleading under Indiana Trial Rule 8.” See Eads v. Cmty. Hosp., 932 N.E.2d 1239, 1246 (Ind. 2010).
Second, the School’s summary-judgment motion and proposed order addressed only Ruch’s emotional-distress claim, not her claim for economic damages. See App. Vol. 2, pp. 8, 22–23. While both the motion and the order referred to “all claims,” the School made no effort, as our summary-judgment standard requires, to show the absence of a genuine fact-issue related to her economic-damages claim. See Gaff v. Indiana-Purdue Univ. of Fort Wayne, 51 N.E.3d 1163, 1167 (Ind. 2016) (emphasizing that it’s the movant’s “burden to affirmatively negate the plaintiff’s claim” and “not the plaintiff’s burden to make a prima facie case”).
For these reasons, the trial court improperly dismissed Ruch’s individual claim for economic damages.
Conclusion
Because Ruch has satisfied the elements of our new carve-out exception to the bystander rule, and while the trial court issued its decision without the benefit of our new test, we hold that summary judgment is improper for the School on Ruch’s emotional-distress claim. We also hold that, because the School’s summary-judgment motion addressed only Ruch’s emotional-distress claim, the trial court improperly dismissed Ruch’s individual claim for economic damages. As a result, we remand this case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Rush, C.J., and David, J., concur.
Slaughter, J., dissents with separate opinion in which Massa, J., joins
Slaughter, J., dissenting.
This heart-rending case illustrates the adage that hard cases make bad law…
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The Court admits this abrupt change in our law represents the minority view. “At the end of the day, we acknowledge that most states have refrained from disposing of a proximity requirement.” Ante, at 15. See also id. at 14 (“To be sure, the tide of precedent tends to flow in the opposite direction.”). But the Court proceeds anyway, striking what it considers just the right balance between the competing policy goals of expanding our emotional-distress doctrine to “do justice” for this mother and to “meet the reasonable expectations of the millions of Hoosiers governed by our legal system”, id. at 2, while avoiding “spurious claims and open-ended liability”, id. at 11. Only time will tell whether today’s watershed rule is so narrow and fact-specific that it proves to be a one-way ticket for this ride only—or whether, as I suspect, it is the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent, with the rest of the camel soon to follow.
Even if I am wrong and the limited scope of today’s expanded rule holds, a further question remains: what principle justifies drawing the line here and not elsewhere? The Court’s desire to avoid a slippery-slope descent toward an “open-ended” regime of emotional-distress liability is commendable. But it is no more principled than others’ desire to ski on. The fine-tuning we announce today is more a legislative than a judicial function. The legislature is better suited to weigh the competing value judgments that suffuse today’s opinion on when claimants can recover inherently subjective emotional-distress damages. If the Court is right that today’s rule reflects “the reasonable expectations of the millions of Hoosiers governed by our legal system”, id. at 2, then their elected representatives in our legislature should be the ones to say so. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
Massa, J., joins.