So I Finally Understand the "Impact Rule" But Why Does It Still Exist? (Florida‪)‬

In reading the Florida Supreme Court's recent decision in Willis v. Gami Golden Glades, LLC, 967 So. 2d 846 (Fla. 2007), I was catapulted back to a chilly auditorium in Gainesville, back in December of 1990, taking my final exam in Professor Joe Little's Torts I class. Scanning the exam in a cold sweat, I remember eyeing a question that read something like: "What is the 'impact rule' and how is it applied in Florida?" Back then, Professor Little was hoping to elicit some basic recognition that litigants could not generally recover for purely emotional injury. He was asking us to recall the one exception he had gone over in detail, in which a court had allowed a man to recover damages for the death of his wife after she suffered a fatal heart attack from the intense emotional devastation that occurred upon seeing the body of her daughter, who had just been killed by a drunk driver. (1)