Opinion ID: 1711814
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: family members' immunity

Text: As noted, Judge Gersten's opinion contains a thorough analysis, and we borrow from much of that analysis here. Legal commentators note that the rule granting parents legal immunity from tort actions brought by their children does not have its origins or any long roots in the English common law, but appears, rather, to have been created by American state courts. Commentators trace the rule's origin to an opinion of the Mississippi Supreme Court decided in 1891. The case involved a young married woman, separated from her husband at the time, who sued her mother for wrongfully confining her to an insane asylum when she was a minor. [1] See Hewellette v. George, 68 Miss. 703, 9 So. 885 (1891). In reviewing the young woman's claim, the court noted that so long as the parent is under obligation to care for, guide, and control, and the child is under reciprocal obligation to aid and comfort and obey, no such action as this can be maintained. Id. at 887. The court explained its rationale: The peace of society, and of the families composing society, and a sound public policy, designed to subserve the repose of families and the best interests of society, forbid to the minor child a right to appear in court in the assertion of a claim to civil redress for personal injuries suffered at the hands of the parent. The state, through its criminal laws, will give the minor child protection from parental violence and wrong-doing, and this is all the child can be heard to demand. Id. [2] The doctrine was accepted and further developed in opinions by the Supreme Courts of Tennessee and Washington, and later by other state courts. See Roller v. Roller, 37 Wash. 242, 79 P. 788 (1905), overruled in part by Borst v. Borst, 41 Wash.2d 642, 251 P.2d 149 (1952); McKelvey v. McKelvey, 111 Tenn. 388, 77 S.W. 664 (1903), overruled by Broadwell v. Holmes, 871 S.W.2d 471 (Tenn.1994). In McKelvey, the Tennessee Supreme Court reasoned that allowing a minor's suit would interfere with public policy supporting discretionary parental control and discipline. See McKelvey, 77 S.W. at 664-65. In Roller, the Supreme Court of Washington emphasized its concerns that no practical line could be developed to separate meritorious claims from those based on actions properly and routinely taken by a parent against a child as part of the exercise of a broad parental discretion. [3] See Roller, 79 P. at 789. Other courts have added a concern of the possibility of fraud and collusion between family members and the depletion of family resources as additional rationales for the immunity doctrine. [4] However, the concern with family integrity has remained at the core of the doctrine.