it will the attorneys as soon as you get situated please step up to the podium tell me your names who you represent and approximately how long your argument will take good morning good address the topic of birth related towards and to consider the ramifications of extent expanding the damages that are available for wrongful pregnancy claims the on the defense side we believe that our position is with sickle cell disease the defendants challenge the aspect of the damage damage claim and count one to the asst extent that the claimant seek damages that are not recognize as recoverable in any illinois reported decision in a for pregnancy case the trial judge however felt it was appropriate to deny the motion to dismiss based on his conclusion that no decision address the specific allegations that were contained in the that i guess i would i would not necessarily concede that there is alleged and extraordinary need but i don't believe that what the court said was that this including those types of and i don't believe that the allegations of this complaint establish an extraordinary need when you look at all of the circumstances that are alleged but the basis of our questioning of this is that taking you know analyzing the allegations within the construct of proximate cause the fact that there is an allegation that says we told the physician that we run it too we want the basically the purpose of was to avoid the specific problem and i think i don't believe that the court said you necessarily have stated a cause of action or you necessarily have a claim within the body of law if you make a believe the distinction and that is the distinction between wrongful birth cases and wrongful pregnancy cases i think it's if when looking at the you know the body of ron i'm sure the court has looked at these cases carefully a injury that's a red in the wrong for bruce situation than we do in the wrongful pregnancy situation based on all of the cases so when the wrongful roast situation the injury that is recognized in the case  the the parents have been i'm sorry you're out of there could well no no i disagree with that your honor the the injury that it's not an injury the child that's that's off the table i'd respectfully submit to the court based on the says of the wrong for life based on that that's a prohibited claim based on the concept that the courts in illinois do not recognize it as a compensable injury the birth of a healthy child no matter if you have a wrong for birth situation no matter if you both course you wouldn't in that situation but no matter if you have a wrongful life situation or run for pregnancy situation and that's the you know the wrongful pregnancies situation clearly the the point is to stop all pregnancies but to to go back to the to the distinction between month old birth and why we to have these types of damages available in their case versus a wrongful pregnancy injury is not to the child the injury is to the parents the injury is that the parents are deprived of the opportunity to make an informed decision about whether to proceed with the pregnancy or against it and that's the sum of their case or whether to attempt decision in ruins the injury is the is the fact that the plaintiff becomes pregnant that's much different then the injury in the wrongful birth situation because the plaintiff in the wrongful pregnancy situation is runs of the problem at the time that she becomes pregnant she's not deprived of the opportunity to decide whether to go forward with the pregnancy or not the the the wrong doing so to speak of the doctor and the  wrongdoing on the pleadings here in the wrongful birth situation is negligent testing or negligent counseling you came to me and said i want to know if that the chances of my child having x if you give me the wrong information the cause or the results of that is i don't have i don't make the decision they make the decision to go forward i have a child with these problems that's not what is involved in the wrong for pregnancy situation in the wrongful pregnancy situation the damage that the courts have recognized is that the wife the mother becomes pregnant in these situations but the damages are cut off at the point that you know they're from kaka now to say that there is a difference here because somebody has been told i my motivation here is that i want to  don't like the ads of seventy five percent odds of having a child that's healthy regardless of these risk factors i don't want to have any more children let's change the fact peter and i think this somewhat illustrates even more strong that there's no causal relationship regardless of bad information the fact that the doctor is advise of the reasons for the plaintiff or for the parents to want to see a  so the doctor knows he has a notice of this pacific quickly desiring not to have another child with sickle cell disease and it's foreseeable that if he negligently perform the procedure that it's going to the fact that the doctor is informed of the reasons however your honor does not increase the chant the risk you know it the doctor then knows has another piece of the doctor has  that the the parents come in and say we we want to have remembered for his sterilization we want to go forward with a tool like ation because we're we're very concerned that our child would suffer from x syndrome an x syndrome is a one in a million chance ok so now the doctor knowing that the doctor is not going to do anything differently and that's recognized in the williams appel decision where the court said that the met the the doctors now ridge the the history of these other problems really has nothing to do with anything it's not going to change anything the doctor does he's going to go for it and  be held to a standard of care regardless of his knowledge of this history it doesn't there's no there's no relationship between the two things now let's go back to one percent if i'm if let's say we have been unreasonably concerned parent or just a parent who doesn't want to take even a one percent risk the fact that they at one percent risk is there and certainly there is risk in any situation where someone goes forward with a pregnancy and doesn't and in this situation unlike wrongful birth doesn't decide to exercise the op action to terminate so the pinnacle for goes forward in any in any situation regardless of what the dot the doctor knows to be or is told allegedly to be the reason for the parents wanting to stop off for their pregnancies it doesn't increase the risk it's still one percent so the the question that th situation i don't know it depends what the negligent elec allegation of wrongdoing is but in the end situation the doctor is specifically challenged with looking testing advising for that and that's what was involved here this doctor wasn't asked to advise me as to the chances this doctor wasn't consulted to help us decide help us make an informed decision should we have another child what are the what are the risks there is nothing like that and that's the difference between these two cases so look at the so consider the situation that the dissent raise in the williams supreme court case and then situation that was identified i think is very interesting and this is you know this one out of you know ten chance or one out of however percent she has this is what worries me so please i'd like to know a geisha and and the exit to a and then that specific risk comes comes right after the after the two british and fails and there's a pregnancy but not in the situation where there's a completely different issue so the child you know has some other has some other terrible congenital problem why would there be a difference here i don't i don't think there's a cause wrong lines all the time i know and they do and they drew the line in this case your honour's and i see that there's some classing at the clock and that my time probably is up but i'd love to answer any other questions that the justices h here i think that the answer to the certified question should be no and i thank you for your consideration a court every pregnancy carries with it the possibility that a child can be born with a genetic disorder when a physician is aware that the parent seeks sterilization in order to prevent conceiving clients with him like i agree your honor this is all about first the foreseeability as you said earlier it's not about the physician increasing the risk of the harm to the parents or increasing the risk that they may have a child with a border it's all about the first the ability of the issue and that's what we play at and our complaint that it was forseeable that the williams would have a child potentially but have a child with sickle cell disease thus we ask this court to answer the sort of fact question in the affirmative the issue before this court is actually the scope of damages of bailable and wrongful pregnancy cases where the child is born with a genetic disorder say that that case declined to extend damages available to wrong for paying the suit cases however and williams the supreme court did not as you stated earlier your honor for close recovery of these damages the court left that question open as to whether or not parents were that's a particular need to avoid conceiving a child with a particular genetic disorder who communicates that need to the physician may recover as damages the extraordinary expenses of raising that honor if that particular condition was communicated to the physician and that made it first see a boat that the mother if she became pregnant could potentially have a child with juvenile onset date is there any level below there where the parent calms and you know i already have a left handed child and i really don't want another left handed child because they're so difficult right i mean is there houris of this where do you draw the line i see what i see where you're going your honor there has to be a distinction made between physical attributes and a serious medical condition so the court is stupid enough to tell the difference between you know whether someone's not happy with left handedness i'm not happy but i don't want another child with this one i mean you know where we're all you go with the need well i guess we can't really put our percentage on it like in this case as you said earlier it's medically recognized that there's a twenty five percent chance that two people with sickle cell trait could have a child with sickle cell disease however what we're looking at is whether or not bad particular medical disorder or genetic disorder was something that was foreseeable the forsee ability is what is important here whether it's diabetes whether it's asthma those are all recognized as authors that you know can cause some serious expense when it issue with as i said a physical attribute shortness bonus left handedness however when it is a serious medical disease like sickle cell disease who you know that the patients are in and out of the hospital all the time like juvenile and that's the way we play it in our complaint that dr rozen here knew that these clients were both carers of sickle cell disease he knew that they had a fund that already was afflicted with sickle cell disease and need to avoid conception that it was reluctant to commit recovery so the point to be taken from williams is where are the birth of an abnormal child is not reasonably foreseeable the physician is not held liable cause however the supreme court left the door open to the possibility that when that recovery can be had when the proximate cause is sufficiently established the circuit court below was correct in deciding that under the facts presented here the birth of a child with a congenital disorder was a forseeable consequence of the doctor's neighborhoods this question also be guided by the supreme court's analysis in saying the act we've been talking about that case a little bit in sydney at the supreme court formally recognized the two what of wrongful birth and held that parents may recover the extraordinary expenses medical and otherwise associated with the genetic disorder that are necessary to properly manage and treat the congenital disorder like simply at the parents here were seeking the same result that was to avoid the both of which child with a particular disease in this case just by consuming act the parents communicated their specific need to the defendant dr as i said dr rozen knew they had another child with sickle cell congenital defect or not that's you know that's the law in the state finally it is settled tort law principles that the defendant is responsible for all the damages that result from that proximate created a condition under which the sickle cell disease that the child with sickle cell disease could be born defendants also it made in their brief that kennedy's condition it was determined up on conception but as the pleadings established and as i submit to you today that condition was intended to be avoided but for the negligence of the defended it was brought about in this case it was clearly foreseeable that the particular need to avoid such an outcome defendant should be legally responsible for the damages plate for because the child born with sickle cell disease and this case resin natural and probable result of the sterilization procedure rather than genetic services to then to deny the recovery of these damages which severely impair the remedy of bailable to parents who fall victim to defendants negligence i want to address just one of the points that the the difference in the injury between wrongful pregnancy and wrongful birth cases the interest in wrongful pregnancy and wrongful birth cases is the same and i think you somewhat alluded to that is that  when the physician is negligent he interferes with the parent's right to make an informed decision about whether or not to have a child in the role for both cases the plaintiff goes to the p and it could bury whether the person is already expecting or not but they go to the position for advice about whether or not this child could end up with a genetic disorder in wrong in this particular wrong pregnancy case the plaintiff went to the physician physicians to purposely prevent having the child afflicted with a particular genetic disorder so forward for the foregoing reasons we asked this court to answer what i hear from counsel is the conclusion over and over again that the information provided to the doctor somehow increases forsee ability and i don't think it can be the case i think that the the the question of foreseeability has been defined in the question of proximate cause is defined in cases after case as is it the natural and probable result of the what a reasonably prudent person do you do the injury that's a red to be a likely result of the negligent asked and that's and whether somebody says the reason that i would like to have a tubal ligation is because i want to avoid one of the specific you know many birth defects that can happen it doesn't that doesn't impact th and they add and that is really the important factor that has to be considered in determining whether when the when this when the supreme court said well you know perhaps if there was a particular need to avoid this specific defect then maybe that maybe that would impact the analysis but when you take a closer look at it it does not impact the elsa's your honor and there was an argument that that i think frankly is not supported at all in the case law that there's some sort of a distinction that for a particular categories of physical disabilities that those would come within this exception that the plaintiffs are you asking this court to kind of out from cockrum from williams and i don't know of any case that says that in fact i think williams actually the supreme court's decision actually refutes it for you and you know it the supreme court  did raise the question the after considering the case before it and saying well maybe that would matter but maybe it wouldn't because maybe any kind of if we go down the slope the exception can swallow the rule and that's really  possibly be drawn and it certainly isn't supported in the case in fact i think it's refuted by the case law let me also change the facts the facts yet or to to illustrate our point what if the need the particular and burning need of the patient who comes in and says i would like to have to have a leg ation is i i cannot afford another child my particular to avoid the economic consequences also does that mean then that it's foreseeable that if that there's a tubal ligation fails you have a child there's going to be economic consequences now i get i get to break cover for those damages i don't think i don't think that hypothetical that you're really back to the cause of raising healthy well which is prohibited and so is one of the lines as strong but i'm saying the fact that that the fact that the point that i'm trying to make by taking this to the nth degree your honor is that the fact that the doctor is advise here is the reason why i want to do this is my particular need it just it just shouldn't impact the analysis and i think that becomes clear once you know you know as as counsel acknowledges it's not going to change the standard of care it's not going to change with it does and i think to blur the lines as counsel suggests between one for both the process of birth injury and ru pregnancy injury is definitely not permitted by the supreme court jurisprudence on this topic and i and i ran and ran through that portion of the n f l so soon the opening part of my argument i but i have to emphasize the injury is not the same and that's why the damages that flow from the wrongful birth injury versus wrongful pregnancy injury are not the same and this court i believe would be stepping  but i was oppressed by your argument that this matter will be taken under it bo