Opinion ID: 1165377
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Tortious injuries to family relationships.

Text: Several of the analogies from which other courts have drawn arguments for or against a child's tort claim for psychic harm from the negligent disablement of a parent are themselves open issues in Oregon. Of the custodial parent's action for the injury of a child, ORS 30.010, this court has said that the statute preserved the parent's common law action for such injury independent of an action by the child or the child's estate; [23] but the court has not decided whether the parent has a claim for emotional distress from a child's nonfatal injury, perhaps because almost all the decisions involved deaths, for which recovery of such damages was excluded until 1973. The parent's action therefore does not lend support to such a claim on the part of a child. The same applies to recovery for emotional trauma from observing a physical injury to a member of the family, another open issue in this state. Similarly, there is no Oregon precedent on a child's action for alienation of a parent's affection. [24] Other injuries to family relationships have had recent legislative attention and perhaps might provide principles for one coherent view of the role of civil liability in protecting such relationships. This proves not to be so. As between spouses, both the action for alienation of affection and that for loss of consortium began as actions available only to the husband. This court held that the act removing a wife's civil disabilities allowed her to sue for alienation of her husband's affection, but that the same act did not extend to the wife a cause of action for loss of the husband's consortium. [25] The court later explained that alienation of affections differed from loss of consortium in being an intentional tort and one inflicted directly upon the wife rather than a consequence of injury to another. [26] The action for loss of consortium was soon extended to the wife by statute. Or. Laws 1941, ch. 228. The evident concern was with equality between the spouses, not with the principle of the tort itself. In more recent times, however, equality with respect to alienation of affections was provided not by making this claim available to wives but by abolishing it altogether, along with the tort of criminal conversation. Or. Laws 1975, ch. 562. [27] The legislative history makes clear that despite their intentional character and the resulting emotional harm to the injured spouse, these actions for invasion of the family relationship were considered outmoded by changing views of marriage, divorce, and sexual relations, as reflected in the repeal in 1971 of criminal laws against adultery and enactment of nofault divorce laws. No attention was given to the question whether children had or, if so, should retain an action for deprivation of a parent's affection. Again, this history does not lend support to a negligence claim for psychic injury from loss of a parent's society and companionship based specifically on the family relationship, as distinct from other relationships of close emotional dependence. Most directly in point is the inclusion of the survivor's loss of a decedent's society and companionship in the statutory action for wrongful death. As stated above, this parallel also gave the majority in Borer v. American Airlines, supra , and the dissent in Berger v. Weber, supra , the most difficulty. We are not convinced by the California court's distinction of the wrongful death action on the ground that, unlike an action based on a nonfatal injury, its main object is to assure that the tortfeasor not escape the deterrent effect of liability. More in point is the observation of the Michigan dissenters that the wrongful death law recognizes intangible losses of others besides a decedent's children, not so much because this scope of the law threatens to extend recovery for such losses from nonfatal disablements, but because it undercuts the premise that the law expresses a special concern for minor child's psychic dependence on its parents. In 1972, the history of Oregon's wrongful death act and decisions under it were reviewed in Justice Tongue's opinion for the Court in Goheen v. General Motors Corp., 263 Or. 145, 502 P.2d 223 (1972). See also Escobedo v. Ward, supra n. 23, 255 Or. at 97-99, 464 P.2d 698. In summary, the original version of Lord Campbell's Act enacted in the Deady Code of 1862 allowed the personal representative of a decedent to recover damages for the wrongful death of the decedent, limited to $5000 for the benefit of the estate. The act made no special provision for the decedent's family or other dependents, and it was interpreted to allow no solatium for their grief and anguish but only for pecuniary loss to the estate. [28] This was changed in 1939 to provide that the personal representative would act for the benefit of the widow or widower and dependents, and only if there were none of these for the benefit of the estate, but the economic premise of the recovery was not changed. Or. Laws 1939, ch. 466. The act again was amended in 1967 to remove the limitation on the maximum recovery (then $25,000) and to specify damages in terms of reasonable and fair compensation for the actual pecuniary loss, if any, to the spouse, dependents, or estate. Or. Laws 1967, ch. 544; see Goheen, supra 263 Or. at 168-171, 502 P.2d 223. Following Goheen, the 1973 legislature further amended the specification of damages allowable in an action for wrongful death, Or. Laws 1973 ch. 718. See Comment, Wrongful Death Actions in Oregon: New Developments, 10 Will. L.J. 217 (1974). Two provisions of the 1973 statute are relevant to the present issue. One provision expanded the damages recoverable by the decedent's spouse, children and parents to include damages for loss of the society, companionship and services of the decedent. ORS 30.020(2)(d). [29] Another provided for the apportionment of these damages according to each beneficiary's loss. ORS 30.040, ORS 30.050. Indisputably this legislation recognizes that a person's immediate family suffers more from his or her untimely death than merely pecuniary loss. What does this recognition mean for the child's cause of action for a parent's nonfatal disablement? The correct answer is by no means selfevident. The implications drawn from the historical development by the Chief Justice's dissent and by Judge Roberts in the Court of Appeals are tenable conclusions. A majority of the Court, however, has concluded that the amendments to the wrongful death statute do not demonstrate a more general exception from the limits on negligence liability for one person's loss from injury to another. The legislative history of the 1973 wrongful death legislation offers some help. The amendments were opposed in committee testimony on the grounds that the emotional injury of lost companionship cannot be compensated by money and that such compensation would lead to increased litigation and higher insurance costs. The legislature's rejection of these objections supports our rejection of the same arguments made by the present defendants and in Borer v. American Airlines, supra . On the other hand, the legislative history also makes clear that the object of the legislation was to correct shortcomings in the existing measure of damages for an established cause of action, not to recognize a new one. The prescription of actual pecuniary loss, if strictly applied, often would preclude any recovery for wrongful death, particularly when the decedent was very young or old or a disabled person. The sponsor of the 1973 amendments cited the opinion in Goheen to suggest that juries nevertheless would take nonpecuniary elements into consideration, so why not put them in the statute and be frank with the jury. [30] The legislature proceeded to make that adjustment in the familiar action for wrongful death without further reexamining either the historical or the contemporary basis for that action. The tortfeasor's liability to the survivors of a deceased victim was not in question. Although the emotional impact of the lost society, companionship and services resulting from a nonfatal disablement is similar to that now recognized in recoveries for wrongful death, and may even be more lasting and severe, it need not follow from this alone that a defendant's liability is the same. The law may treat liability for causing death as a special case, in which compensation necessarily extends beyond the ordinary restitution to the immediately injured person. Perhaps that distinction between the often fortuitous death or survival of the injured person deserves reexamination when the focus is moved to the consequential harm to third persons. [31] But the single analogy to the 1973 amendments of the wrongful death act does not suffice to show that among such third persons, children now have a cause of action for such harm from nonfatal injuries that deprive them of a parent's society and companionship.