State High Court Permits Suit by ‘Horror’ Witnesses : Law: Two bystanders saw woman’s death on Palm Springs tramway but were not physically harmed. Justices allow them to seek monetary damages for emotional trauma.

The state Supreme Court, acting on an unusual legal claim, on Monday allowed two unharmed passengers to seek monetary damages for the emotional trauma they say they suffered in a fatal accident on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway in June, 1984.

The justices, in a brief order, refused to hear a challenge to a ruling last May by a state Court of Appeal permitting the passengers to sue for emotional distress after they were splattered with the blood of a woman killed in the incident.

The high court, however, limited the effect of the appellate ruling by barring it from being used as a precedent in other cases. Such so-called “horror” suits are said to be on the rise nationally, and the California case had been widely watched in legal circles.

Until now, state courts generally had limited the recovery of damages to instances where emotional distress results from witnessing the death or serious injury of a child or other close relative.

The suit at issue was filed by David Ballinger and Jacqueline Didier, two of about 50 passengers riding in a tramway car when a component of the system crashed through the plexiglass roof, fatally injuring Elaine Tseko, 27. Both were showered with Tseko’s blood.

Ballinger and Didier sued the Mt. San Jacinto Winter Park Authority, the state and other defendants for an unspecified amount of damages.

Ballinger said he suffered from nightmares, flashbacks and acute claustrophobia, feared entering elevators, airplanes and buses, and had not been able to resume skiing because ski lifts reminded him of the tramway. Didier cited similar effects from the incident.

A Riverside County Superior Court rejected their claims but the appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling, said Ballinger and Didier--even though unharmed and unrelated to the victim--could sue for distress.

Appellate Justice Thomas E. Hollenhorst, joined by Justice Howard M. Dabney, said individuals in a “zone of danger” as the two passengers were could sue for the trauma they suffered out of fear for their own safety. In that sense, Ballinger and Didier could be viewed as “direct victims,” not just bystanders, the majority said.

In a sharp dissent, Appellate Justice F. Douglas McDaniel called the ruling “astounding,” saying it represented “the most drastic enlargement of tort liability” in such cases in well over a century. Under the majority’s analysis, McDaniel said, suit could be brought by any unharmed motorists who were on a section of the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland when it collapsed during in the Oct. 17 Bay Area earthquake.

Attorneys for the defendants in the case expressed similar concerns in their subsequent appeal to the state Supreme Court. Virtually any bystander to a serious accident could sue on the grounds of a “close call,” vastly expanding the current limits of legal liability, the lawyers warned.

Lawyers for Ballinger and Didier replied that the defendants’ claims were “greatly exaggerated and distorted.” The public has a right to expect safe recreational facilities, and allowing such lawsuits would justly deter the production and use of defective equipment, the attorneys said.

On Monday, Peter J. Koenig of San Francisco, an attorney for the park authority and the state, welcomed the high court’s limit on wider application of the appellate ruling but still voiced disappointment that the tramway case itself now can go to trial. “This was a gross exaggeration of liability in these kinds of settings,” Koenig said. “You may go through an intersection just before an accident and then think, ‘There for the grace of God go I.’ But that’s not grounds for a lawsuit.”

The attorney for the two plaintiffs could not be reached for comment.