Opinion ID: 1392831
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the child's cause of action: wrongful life

Text: We decline to recognize any action by a child for defects claimed to have been caused to the child by negligent diagnosis or treatment of the child's mother. The Grecos' argument is conditional and narrowly put, so: if this court does not allow Sundi Greco to recover damages for Joshua's care past the age of majority, it should allow Joshua to recover those damages by recognizing claims for wrongful life. Implicit in this argument is the assumption that the child would be better off had he never been born. These kinds of judgments are very difficult, if not impossible, to make. Indeed, most courts considering the question have denied this cause of action for precisely this reason. [4] Recognizing this kind of claim on behalf of the child would require us to weigh the harms suffered by virtue of the child's having been born with severe handicaps against the utter void of nonexistence; this is a calculation the courts are incapable of performing. Gleitman v. Cosgrove, 227 A.2d 689, 692 (N.J. 1967). The New York Court of Appeals framed the problem this way: Whether it is better never to have been born at all than to have been born with even gross deficiencies is a mystery more properly to be left to the philosophers and the theologians. Surely the law can assert no competence to resolve the issue, particularly in view of the very nearly uniform high value which the law and mankind has placed on human life, rather than its absence. Becker v. Schwartz, 386 N.E.2d 807, 812 (N.Y. 1978). We conclude that Nevada does not recognize a claim by a child for harms the child claims to have suffered by virtue of having been born.