Section 25 Cases Awarding Recovery for Mental Anguish

• Library: Damages 2012

Even before the impact rule was abolished in Missouri in 1983, courts allowed damages for mental anguish without physical injury if they constituted the natural and probable consequences of the character of wrong committed and were the only injurious consequences to flow from it. For example, in Golston v. Lincoln Cemetery, Inc., 573 S.W.2d 700, 704–05 (Mo. App. W.D. 1978), the children of a decedent were allowed to recover for mental anguish from a mortuary because they observed their mother’s body uncovered in a shallow grave rather than buried in a vault. Likewise, in LaBrier v. Anheuser Ford, Inc., 612 S.W.2d 790, 793 (Mo. App. E.D. 1981), the court...