Bystander Emotional Distress as a Cause of Action in Connecticut

Common law permits bystander emotional distress as a cause of action.

Bystander Emotional Distress

“A bystander may recover damages for emotional distress under the rule of reasonable foreseeability if the bystander satisfies the following conditions: (1) he or she is closely related to the injury victim, such as the parent or the sibling of the victim; (2) the emotional injury of the bystander is caused by the contemporaneous sensory perception of the event or conduct that causes the injury, or by arriving on the scene soon thereafter and before substantial change has occurred in the victim’s condition or location; (3) the injury of the victim must be substantial, resulting in his or her death or serious physical injury; and (4) the bystander’s emotional injury must be serious, beyond that which would be anticipated in a disinterested witness and which is not the result of an abnormal response.” Squeo v. Norwalk Hosp. Ass’n, 316 Conn. 558, 571, 113 A.3d 932 (2015).