Opinion ID: 1198876
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Mr. Green's Loss of Consortium Claim

Text: Washington recognizes loss of consortium as a separate, not derivative, claim. Reichelt, 107 Wash.2d at 776, 733 P.2d 530. Mr. Green's cause of action for loss of consortium, as a separate and independent claim, accrued when he first experienced injury due to loss of consortium. Id. Joshua Green claims loss of consortium damages stemming from Kathleen's difficult pregnancy. The Court of Appeals correctly pointed out the rule in most jurisdictions: a loss of consortium claim does not lie when the injury to the spouse that caused the loss of consortium occurred prior to the marriage. Green, 86 Wash.App. at 68, 935 P.2d 652. See Charles Plovanich, Annotation, Recovery for Loss of Consortium for Injury Occurring Prior to Marriage, 5 A.L.R.4th 300 (1981 & 1997 Supp.). Because Kathleen Green's injury resulted from her mother's ingestion of DES while Kathleen was in utero, the injury was prior to her marriage to Joshua. Thus, Joshua arguably married into the injury, and ought not have a cause of action for loss of consortium. One court listed three rationales for this rule: (1) a person should not be permitted to marry a cause of action; (2) one assumes with a spouse the risk of deprivation of consortium arising from any prior injury; (3) as a matter of policy, tort liability should be limited. Stager v. Schneider, 494 A.2d 1307, 1315 (D.C.App.1985). But the listed three rationales for the majority rule ignore the circumstance in which the injury to the affected spouse is latent and unknown. Joshua Green could not have married a lawsuit in 1988 if Kathleen herself did not know then she had a T-shaped uterus that would cause her to have difficult pregnancies. The assumption of risk rationale suffers from the same defect. One cannot assume a risk one does not and cannot know about. Kirk v. Washington State University, 109 Wash.2d 448, 454-55, 746 P.2d 285 (1987). The third rationale is also weak; it is surely foreseeable that a future spouse or close relative might suffer loss of consortium damages. The class of potential plaintiffs is therefore quite limited, confined to those who might some day be in consortium with an injured party. Thus, allowing such claims does not expose a tortfeasor to unbounded liability. The best argument for rejecting the majority rule, however, is its fundamental unfairness in the toxic exposure context: loss of consortium damages should be available for a premarital injury if the injured spouse either does not know or cannot know of the injury. Although still a distinct minority, several courts have recognized this principle in toxic torts cases. Stager, 494 A.2d 1307; Kociemba v. G.D. Searle & Co., 683 F.Supp. 1577 (D.Minn.1988); Aldredge v. Whitney, 591 So.2d 1201 (La.App.1991); Furby v. Raymark Indus., Inc., 154 Mich.App. 339, 397 N.W.2d 303 (1986). We now join those courts and hold that Joshua Green's claim for loss of consortium accrued when he knew or should have known the essential elements of his claim. [9] Because we decline to apply an absolute bar to premarital injuries if the spouse seeking a loss of consortium claim could not know of the harm, we remand the case to the trial court where Mr. Green will have the burden of proving both when he first experienced the loss and what damages he suffered.