Opinion ID: 1679366
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Duty of CareChild's Claim

Text: The plaintiffs allege that the defendant's negligent surgery and failure to warn the parents caused the child to be born with albinism. Apparently they do not contend that the malpractice directly caused the birth defect, but their petition implies that the doctor's carelessness caused the child's birth and thereby made it possible for the congenital defect to occur. Although we conclude provisionally that under the facts alleged in the petition the doctor did not owe a duty to protect the child from the risk of albinism, we reject defendant's arguments calling for a categorical denial of any duty on the part of a physician to protect an unconceived child from being born with a birth defect. When a physician knows or should know of the existence of an unreasonable risk that a child will be born with a birth defect, he owes a duty to the unconceived child as well as to its parents to exercise reasonable care in warning the potential parents and in assisting them to avoid the conception of the deformed child. The time has come when we can and should say that each person owes a duty to take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which he can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure a present or future member of society unless there is some justification or valid explanation for its exclusion. Although there may be good reason in a particular case to limit liabiity for breach of this duty under concepts of legal cause, everything in the Code, the statutes and the underlying policy considerations encourages the recognition of such a duty as a prima facie obligation. The persons at whose disposal society has placed the potent implements of technology owe a heavy moral obligation to use them carefully and to avoid foreseeable harm to present or future generations. In the field of medicine, as in that of manufacturing, the need for compensation of innocent victims of defective products and negligently delivered services is a powerful factor influencing tort law. Typically in these areas also the defendants' capacity to bear and distribute the losses is far superior to that of consumers. Additionally these defendants are in a much better position than the victims to analyze the risks involved in the defendants' activities and to either take precautions to avoid them or to insure against them. Consequently, a much stronger and more effective incentive to prevent the occurrence of future harm will be created by placing the burden of foreseeable losses on the defendants than upon the disorganized, uninformed victims. Logic and sound policy require a recognition of a legal duty to a child not yet conceived but foreseeably harmed by the negligent delivery of health care services to the child's parents. Although this view has not yet been widely adopted, several courts have held that it is not necessary that the legal duty be owed to one in existence at the time of the wrongful act. Bergstreser v. Mitchell, 577 F.2d 22 (8th Cir.1978); Renslow v. Mennonite Hospital, 67 Ill.2d 348, 10 Ill.Dec. 484, 367 N.E.2d 1250 (1977); Jorgensen v. Meade Johnson Laboratories, Inc., 483 F.2d 237 (10th Cir. 1973). Contra, Albala v. City of New York, 54 N.Y.2d 269, 429 N.E.2d 786, 445 N.Y.S.2d 108 (1981). [A] thinly reasoned case.... Prosser and Keeton, supra, at § 55. Actually these cases do not present a significant extension of the principles of liability for prenatal injuries. See Robertson, Toward Rational Boundaries of Tort Liability for Injury to the Unborn: Prenatal Injuries, Preconception Injuries and Wrongful Life, 1978 Duke L.J. 1401, 1438 (1978). Moreover, as the Renslow court noted, it has long been recognized that a duty may exist to one foreseeably harmed though he be unknown and remote in time and place. Renslow v. Mennonite Hospital, 10 Ill.Dec. at 488-489, 367 N.E.2d at 1254-1255. [2] That the duty of care, the breach of which will create liability, should not depend on the physical existence of the individual plaintiff at the moment of the defendant's wrongful act is most aptly illustrated by the frequently used hypothetical examples of defective baby food manufactured before the child who consumed it was born, and of the dangerous apparatus installed in the home before the child injured by it was born. Prosser & Keeton, supra, § 55 n. 4; Robertson, supra, 1978 Duke L.J. at 1438. If recovery depended on the baby being alive at the time of manufacture, then such a child would be without a remedy. A wrong without a remedy could easily occur in any products liability case involving a young child victim. See, e.g., Toups v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., 507 So. 2d 809 (La.1987); Brown v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., 514 So.2d 439 (La.1987) cf. Winterrowd v. Travelers Indemnity Co., 462 So.2d 639 (La.1985) (Accident occurred 69 years after manufacture of the machine.). Nevertheless, we conclude that in the present case the physician did not owe a duty to the unconceived child to protect her from the risk of being born with albinism. Our brief study of some of the literature on this congenital disorder indicates that it cannot be easily predicted or foreseen by a treating physician. See M. Strickberger, Genetics pp. 119-122 (2d ed. 1976). The plaintiffs' petition does not contain any allegation that the defendant physician knew or should have known of the risk of this abnormality. The policy considerations affecting tort law do not impel the recognition of a duty when the doctor had no reason to suspect that the danger existed and did not have reasonable means of detecting its potentiality. In the event that our appreciation of the nature of the birth defect or of the precautions available to the medical profession is in error, however, the child's petition shall be dismissed provisionally only, with leave to amend the petition within thirty days of the finality of this decision.