Excerpt from A Treatise on the Law of the Measure of Damages for Personal Injuries: Including Suggestions on Pleading, Evidence, and Province of Court and Jury, Applicable to the Trial of This Class of Cases

There are certain recognized elements of damages which enter into every personal injury, and which, when supported by proper evidence, become the basis of compensation. Some one or more of these elements must appear, in some tangible form, and be sustained by proof before the injured person is entitled to recover any damages. Every fact showing the natural effect of the injury, as a proximate result thereof, upon the body or mind is competent to be considered by the tribunal whose duty it shall be to award the damages. These elements, and the principles of law applicable thereto, have been arranged and classified under appropriate subjects, and all the leading authorities which in any way discuss the questions relating to them have been cited. So far as practical the principal elements of damages have been considered by themselves in separate chapters as damages for expenses, time lost, physical pain and suffering, and diminished earning capacity. Damages sustained by parent and child for an injury to the child, by husband and wife for an injury to the wife, for sickness developed and disease aggravated, for death by wrongful act, and exemplary damages have also been considered and discussed in like manner.

With the present generation there has come a new question of law. It is the subject of mental suffering and the right to recover damages therefor. It is an innovation upon the common law, and may properly be called a child of this progressive age. There is no other recent question which has been so thoroughly examined and discussed by the courts. The authorities are diametrically opposed to each other and are nearly evenly divided upon it, with a growing tendency in its favor. It is impossible to reconcile them and no attempt has been made to do so. The leading authorities have been cited and quoted Wherever this question has been carefully considerei in all its phases. The reason for this was to furnish the arguments pro and can, and to give the views of the courts as expressed by them, leaving their application as might be deemed proper. At the same time the author has not failed to express his own conclusions upon the same questions.

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