Case Title: Smith v. Columbus Community Hosp., Inc.

Citation: 222 Neb. 776, 387 N.W.2d 490

Docket Number: 

State: nebraska

Court: Nebraska Supreme Court

Date: 1986-05-23T00:00:00Z

Document:
387 N.W.2d 490 (1986) 222 Neb. 776 Barbara SMITH, Personal Representative of the Estate of Baby Boy Smith, Deceased, Appellant, v. COLUMBUS COMMUNITY HOSPITAL, INC., a Nebraska Corporation, Appellee. No. 84-891. Supreme Court of Nebraska. May 23, 1986. Richard D. Sievers of Marti, Dalton, Bruckner, O'Gara & Keating, P.C., Lincoln, for appellant. Jewell, Gatz & Collins, Norfolk, for appellee. KRIVOSHA, C.J., and BOSLAUGH, WHITE, HASTINGS, CAPORALE, SHANAHAN, and GRANT, JJ. PER CURIAM. The plaintiff, Barbara Smith, personal representative of the estate of Baby Boy Smith, deceased, appeals the dismissal of the plaintiff's amended petition against Columbus Community Hospital, Inc. The hospital demurred to Smith's petition. When the hospital's demurrer was sustained and the plaintiff elected not to replead by further amended petition, plaintiff's action was dismissed by order of the district court for Platte County. From such dismissal plaintiff appeals. "On reviewing the sustaining of a demurrer, this court must treat as undisputed the facts as alleged in the petition." Blanchard v. White, 217 Neb. 877, 880, 351 N.W.2d 707, 709-10 (1984). In February 1982 Barbara Smith was diagnosed as pregnant, with an expected *491 date of delivery of October 8, 1982. Being in active labor on October 17, Barbara Smith was admitted to the defendant hospital at 5:45 a.m. on that date. At 7:10 a.m. on October 17, Barbara Smith delivered a stillborn male infant at the defendant hospital. Plaintiff's petition alleges that the hospital, through its employees, was guilty of negligence which was the proximate cause of the death of Baby Boy Smith. The plaintiff claimed that the labor room nurse was negligent in failing to properly monitor fetal heart tones, failing to promptly and properly notify plaintiff's physician of her admission, and failing to assemble the hospital's emergency surgical team at a time when the life of Baby Boy Smith could have been saved by performing an emergency cesarean section. Plaintiff, as personal representative, sought special damages for the funeral expenses and general damages for loss of comfort, companionship, and society regarding Baby Boy Smith. The hospital demurred and alleged that the amended petition did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 25-806 (Reissue 1979). As previously indicated, after the court sustained the hospital's demurrer and allowed time for further amendment, the plaintiff elected to stand on her amended petition to which the demurrer had been sustained, and the plaintiff's action was dismissed. The sole question raised in this appeal is whether or not the personal representative of the estate of an unborn child, as a viable fetus which dies prior to birth as the result of another's negligence, has a cause of action for damages recoverable under the Nebraska wrongful death statute. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 30-809 (Reissue 1979) provides: The question raised in the present appeal was raised for the first time in Drabbels v. Skelly Oil Co., 155 Neb. 17, 50 N.W.2d 229 (1951), where the trial court sustained a demurrer to the petition of the administrator of the estate of Coleen Ann Drabbels, an unborn child born dead as the result of an explosion allegedly caused by negligence on the part of the defendant oil company. In Drabbels, supra, plaintiff's petition alleged that at the time of the explosion Audrey Drabbels was 8 months pregnant and that the unborn child was viable and capable of separate and independent existence. In affirming the judgment of the trial court in sustaining the defendant's demurrer and dismissing the plaintiff's petition, we stated at 19, 21-24, 50 N.W.2d at 230-32: We adhere to the rule that an unborn child is a part of the mother until birth and, as such, has no juridical existence.... [W]e can find no convincing authority that a child born dead ever *492 became a person insofar as the law of torts is concerned. Some 26 years later, the same question raised and answered in Drabbels v. Skelly Oil Co., supra, was again brought before this court in Egbert v. Wenzl, 199 Neb. 573, 260 N.W.2d 480 (1977), where the trial court sustained a demurrer to the petition of the administratrix of the estate of Baby Girl Egbert, a viable fetus born dead as the result of alleged negligence of the defendant in operation of a motor vehicle. In affirming the trial court's dismissal of the petition, we held: Egbert v. Wenzl, supra at 573-74, 576, 260 N.W.2d at 481-82. As previously expressed twice prior to the present appeal, if a viable fetus is to be included within the scope of the Nebraska wrongful death statute, § 30-809, the right to recover under the wrongful death statute is still a matter for legislative enactment so expressing and not a matter for this court to include in the wrongful death statute a cause of action of a child born dead. The district court was correct in sustaining the demurrer and dismissing plaintiff's amended petition based on an action for wrongful death. AFFIRMED. SHANAHAN, Justice, dissenting. By uncritically perpetuating the incorrect result reached in Drabbels v. Skelly Oil Co., 155 Neb. 17, 50 N.W.2d 229 (1951), and Egbert v. Wenzl, 199 Neb. 573, 260 N.W.2d 480 (1977), this court has given new meaning to Khayyam's words: Com. v. Cass, 392 Mass. 799, ___, 467 N.E.2d 1324, 1328 (1984). As pointed out by Sheldon R. Shapiro, annotator for the work appearing at 84 A.L.R.3d 411 (1978), the question involves a cause of action "where an unborn child was viable (that is, capable of independent existence apart from its mother) at the time of sustaining injuries resulting in prenatal death." Id. at 415. When the majority shores up its opinion by reiterating there is "no convincing authority" for recognizing the cause of action today denied by this court, there is disregard of an ever-growing body of law throughout the United States. According to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Amadio v. Levin, 509 Pa. 199, 501 A.2d 1085 (1985), decided on December 4, 1985, from 1949 to the present, 29 states and the District of Columbia have recognized that "survival and wrongful death actions lie by the estates of stillborn children for fatal injuries they received while viable children en ventre sa mere." Id. at ___, 501 A.2d at 1086-87. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania concluded that, based on "the body of medical knowledge" existing today, "the reasons formerly relied on to deny [a cause of action for prenatal injury causing stillbirth of a viable fetus] no longer are persuasive." Id. at ___, 501 A.2d at 1087. While the majority of this court clings to a rule having its inception in a lack of information, advances in medical science have now supplied evidence of causal connections between alleged prenatal negligence and damage. See, W. Keeton, Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts, Limited Duty § 55 (5th ed. 1984). If courts disregard developments in science relative to causes of action, motor vehicle negligence law will have to be reconsidered, because courts will have to ignore existence of the wheel. In his scholarly opinion unanimously adopted by the Supreme Court of Arizona in Summerfield v. Superior Court, Maricopa Cty., 144 Ariz. 467, 698 P.2d 712 (1985), decided April 24, 1985, Justice Feldman traces the rule, today reaffirmed by this court's majority construing Nebraska's wrongful death statute, directly to the nascent 19th-century case of Baker v. Bolton, 1 Camp. 493, 170 Eng.Rep. 1033 (1808), which probably emerged from the enlightenment of the 18th century. In Summerfield the Arizona Supreme Court, recognizing that person encompasses a stillborn, viable fetus for the purpose of Arizona's wrongful death statute, held at 477, 479, 698 P.2d at 722, 724: Nebraska should have become the 31st jurisdiction recognizing the cause of action again rejected by this court. From our orbit in a jurisprudential galaxy, today we have rocketed backward into a black hole and a fate uncertain.