The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a woman who unknowingly buried another baby’s remains — not those of her own stillborn child — because of a mix-up at the hospital.
The suit, which sought damages for the infliction of emotional distress, was brought by Amanda Rae Coon, of Opelika, Ala., against The Medical Center in Columbus. On Feb. 8, 2011, Coon, then 37 weeks pregnant, learned her baby did not have a heartbeat during a routine prenatal exam. The next day, she was admitted to The Medical Center and delivered her stillborn daughter after having labor induced.
The hospital’s bereavement coordinator placed the baby’s remains in a holding room with a stillborn baby boy, who had been in gestation for less than 20 weeks.
Using a new hospital policy, a nurse filled out identification tags that were to be placed on the arms and legs of the stillborn babies, as well as around their cadaver bags. A security officer who was to escort the nurse to the morgue offered to help put the tags on the bodies and their bags. But the ID tags were put on the wrong babies, resulting in another person’s stillborn baby being sent to the Coons’ funeral home in Opelika.
On Feb. 12, 2011, Coon and her family attended what they thought was her daughter’s funeral at a local cemetery. But about two weeks later, the hospital discovered its mistake. Its executive director called Coon and told her what had happened. The hospital then transported Coon’s actual daughter’s remains to Opelika and paid for the exhumation of the wrong baby’s remains and the new funeral.
Coon did not attend the second funeral, saying she “could not handle having to go through that all over again,” according to court records.
In Monday’s decision, Justice David Nahmias wrote that the “physical impact rule” governs such claims of emotional distress. In effect, the rule says that a plaintiff may not collect purely emotional damages unless there was a physical impact to his or her body that caused distress and mental suffering.
In this case, Coon suffered no such impact or injury from the hospital’s negligent handling of her stillborn child’s remains, nor did her child suffer any injury from it, Nahmias wrote. He added: “The facts of this case, while tragic, do not warrant a new exception to the physical impact rule.”
An earlier version of this article misstated the length of Amanda Rae Coon’s pregnancy when she learned her fetus had no heartbeat. It should have said 37 weeks.
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