Court Opinion

ID: 9847731
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:06:38.820286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:29.785984
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. As to the constitutional claim, the majority rules that the due process ground must be advanced in the Supreme Court. I agree, but that means that the case should be transferred to the Supreme Court.
Plaintiffs raised a federal due process ground, in support of at least their wrongful birth claim, in the first brief below in opposition to the motion to dismiss. They also made an equal protection argument but did not identify it as such. In addition, they raised state and federal due process and equal protection grounds as to the medical malpractice claims and, if charitably construed, to the fraud claim, in their supplemental brief in opposition to the motion to dismiss, although they cited the wrong Georgia constitutional paragraph for the equal protection provision; it is in paragraph 2, not paragraph 1.
The trial court ordered dismissal of the entire complaint, sub silentio on the fraud count and as to the constitutional grounds; it refers only to Atlanta Ob. & Gyn. Group v. Abelson, 260 Ga. 711 (398 SE2d 557) (1990), as controlling.
Thus at least some of the constitutional grounds, minimally with respect to the medical malpractice claims, were raised and ruled on below. That makes them subject to appellate review. The Court of *305Appeals does not have jurisdiction to give that review because, although appellants are not challenging a statute as being unconstitutional, they are challenging the absence of a cognizable cause of action as being unconstitutional. The Supreme Court in Abelson refused to create a common law cause of action for wrongful birth, but it did not address the question of whether state or federal due process or equal protection would require the acknowledgment of such a cause of action even in the absence of statute. Appellee acknowledges that federal constitutional rights were not addressed by the Georgia Supreme Court in Abelson.
Of course, the Court did not rule that there was no common law cause of action for wrongful life, although in dicta it hinted that it would not create one. The third count, the claim of fraud, was not involved at all in the Abelson case.1
This court would have to address the properly raised constitutional claims unless the phrase in Ga. Const., Art. VI, Sec. VI, Par. II (1), “[a] 11 cases involving the construction ... of the Constitution of the State of Georgia or of the United States ...” embraces the issues. The Supreme Court would have exclusive jurisdiction at least as to the wrongful birth claim, because plaintiffs are challenging on constitutional grounds the Supreme Court’s refusal to give legal cognizance to a claim for wrongful birth as a common law cause of action. The case should be transferred to it.
Maner v. Dykes, 183 Ga. 118, 121 (187 SE 699) (1936), is a case in which the constitutionality of a Public Service Commission rule was drawn into question. The court held that such was not a “law of the State of Georgia,” as that term was used in the 1916 Act amending the State Constitution with respect to appellate jurisdiction.2 Here the claim is that the lack of a statutory right of action violates the Federal Constitution, and that in the absence of such, the court is compelled to give common law cognizance to one.
It does not appear in Aiken v. Richardson, 207 Ga. 735 (64 SE2d 54) (1951), that appellant was challenging the constitutionality of the absence of a statutory right of action as here. The “plaintiff in error” in that case simply “attached certain orders or judgments of the trial court as being violative of stated provisions of the Constitution,” but the opinion does not disclose the grounds of that party’s challenge.
I am authorized to state that Judge Pope joins in this dissent.
*306Decided February 20, 1992
Reconsideration denied March 11, 1992
William Q. Bird, for appellants.
Newton, Smith, Durden, Kaufold & McIntyre, Wilson R. Smith, for appellees.

 The majority opinion does not address the fraud count as a separate cause of action. It was presented by a First Amendment to Plaintiffs’ Complaint, pursued, dismissed by the court, and included in the appeal.

 Whether “a law,” as referred to in the 1983 Constitution of Georgia, Art. VI, Sec. VI, Par. II (1), has the same meaning as given by the Supreme Court to the 1916 amendment to the 1877 Constitution is not for us to say.