Court Opinion

ID: 9717874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:11:58.871231+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:13:48.767481
License: Public Domain

Boyle, J.
(dissenting). I concur in Justice Archer’s conclusion that a parent may maintain a cause of action for loss of filial society and companionship when a child is severely injured. I write separately to express my view as to why this action is appropriate.
First, I acknowledge that there is an inherent contradiction in recognizing the intangible aspects of a relationship and assigning a monetary value to its loss or interference. Any judge who has assessed damages as a factfinder or instructed a jury that "[t]he law leaves such amount to your *309sound judgment,” SJI2d 50.01, cannot fail to appreciate the difficulty of the task or the incongruity of assigning a dollar value to that which cannot be evaluated in a precise dollar amount.
The ultimate issue for this Court is not whether the remedy is difficult to apply or whether it fully redresses the wrong so as to maximize deterrence. Rather, the question for the Court is how the legal system as an institution that represents, inculcates, and transmits social values to future generations should regard the interest seeking protection.
When a cause of action in tort is recognized, society stands with the victim, acknowledges the importance of the value that allegedly has been damaged, and fixes the responsibility of the tortfeasor.1 Thus, the law of torts is no more the mere adjustment of losses by the exchange of money damages than the criminal law is the taking of an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. Certainly money damage is the principal tort remedy, just as punishment is the sanction for criminal behavior. But money damage is no more the purpose of tort *310law than punishment is the purpose of criminal law. The penalties are the imprecise analogies by which the law measures responsibility. The right recognized is the means by which society transmits the judgment that the value involved is worthy of protection.
Recognizing both the frailty of law to provide perfect redress and the power of laws to communicate societal values, we inquire first whether this society accords a unique value to the relationship of parent and child, and second what responsibility an individual bears for injuries to the child of another.
The first question is easily answered.
At stake here is "the interest of a parent in the companionship, care, custody, and management of his or her children.” Stanley v Illinois, 405 US 645, 651 [92 S Ct 1208; 31 L Ed 2d 551] (1972). This interest occupies a unique place in our legal culture, given the centrality of family life as the focus for personal meaning and responsibility. "[F]ar more precious . . . than property rights,” May v Anderson, 345 US 528, 533 [73 S Ct 840; 97 L Ed 1221] (1953), parental rights have been deemed to be among those "essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” Meyer v Nebraska, 262 US 390, 399 [43 S Ct 625; 67 L Ed 1042; 29 ALR 1446] (1923), and to be more significant and priceless than " 'liberties which derive merely from shifting economic arrangements.’ ” Stanley v Illinois, 405 US, at 651, quoting Kovacs v Cooper, 336 US 77, 95 [69 S Ct 448; 93 L Ed 513; 10 ALR2d 608] (1949) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). [Lassiter v Dep’t of Social Services, 452 US 18, 38; 101 S Ct 2153; 68 L Ed 2d 640 (1981) (Blackmun, J., dissenting).][2]
*311Our commitment as a society to the value of the familial relationship is embodied in the Probate Code’s due process protections against interference, and its preference for maintenance of the family unit until established risk to the child requires separation or dissolution.3 Thus, the American view of the value of the family has been consistently more encompassing than the value of the labor lost from injury to the child of a farmer in the agrarian United States. The underlying moral message of the legal system recognizes a unique dimension to the parent-child relationship, reflected existentially by the fact that the most traumatic event in modern day life is the death of a child.4
The continued life, health, and productivity of children are unquestionably paramount concerns of responsible parents. Unlike that of any other family member, a child’s life is the parents’ tangible claim to immortality, the connection to future generations, and the wellspring for parental instruction, parental sacrifice, and parental love.
Whatever cynicism exists today regarding lawyers or frivolous lawsuits, we are required here to steadfastly focus on the existence of real victims, well-founded lawsuits, and negligent third parties. We are required, in short, to suspend all cynicism and face only the question whether a parent whose child must remain on a dialysis machine for the *312rest of her life has suffered a loss that society recognizes.
I assume we would all agree that there is real damage to the familial unit in these circumstances.5
I disagree with the majority that the inability to draw a point of demarcation in a future case should preclude recognition of this claim. In the context of this lawsuit, we either recognize the intangible value of the immediate family unit, or we do not; in the context of our tort system, we recognize that the remedy for interference with this value is either damages or nothing.
I would not defer recognition of this claim to the Legislature. The Legislature may choose to limit damages, to require more exacting proofs, or to limit the period of limitations. It is a rare instance, however, in which the Legislature has recognized a cause of action we have declined to recognize.6
I share the majority’s concern for the economic burdens and social consequences resulting from an extension of tort liability.7 In the context of these *313allegations, I do not accept the majority’s solution. I view this case and this issue, resting as it does upon presumed fault, as well within the traditional, common-law function of the Court.
The majority opinion amounts to a statement that if damage to the family cannot be measured in dollars, it should not be recognized. The majority has thus equated dollars with values and has concluded that because damages cannot be precisely measured, the courts ought not recognize the underlying value. I respectfully dissent.

 As explained by one commentator:
One factor affecting the development of tort law is the moral aspect of the defendant’s conduct — the moral guilt or blame to be attached in the eyes of society to the defendant’s acts, motives, and state of mind. Personal morals are of course a matter on which there may be differences of opinion; but in every community there are certain acts and motives which are generally regarded as morally right, and others which are considered morally wrong. Of course such public opinion has its effect upon the decisions of the courts. The oppressor, the perpetrator of outrage, the knave, the liar, the scandal-monger, the person who does spiteful harm for its own sake, the selfish aggressor who deliberately disregards and overrides the interests of neighbors, may expect to find that the courts of society, no less than the opinion of society itself, condemn the conduct. In a very vague general way, the law of torts reflects current ideas of morality, and when such ideas have changed, the law has tended to keep pace with them. [Prosser & Keeton, Torts (5th ed), § 4, p 21.]

 Although the Lassiter majority refused to recognize the right to counsel at hearings on termination of parental rights, Michigan does recognize the right and requires the appointment of counsel for parents on their request. MCR 5.915(B)(1).

 Under the Juvenile Code, for instance, the jurisdiction of the probate court may be exercised to take temporary jurisdiction on the basis of only a preponderance of the evidence. A termination of parental rights, on the other hand, requires clear and convincing evidence of one of the statutory grounds. MCR 5.972(C), MCR 5.974(D)(2).

 The death of a child is the most stressful event of 102 common life events. By comparison, the death of a spouse ranked second, apd assault, long recognized as a cause of action, ranked fifty-second. Goldberger & Breznitz, Handbook of Stress (New York: The Free Press, 1982), p 342.

 Concern for duplicative recovery perhaps could be addressed by recognizing that it is the nature of the relationship within the unit as a unit that is altered by the injury to one of its immediate members, and that there can be only one recovery for what is an indivisible injury.

 Indeed, in many instances the Legislature has created only administrative mechanisms, but relied upon this Court to exercise its leadership in establishing a civil cause of action. See, e.g., Pompey v General Motors Corp, 385 Mich 537; 189 NW2d 243 (1971).

 The protection against accidental injury provided by the insurance industry has, in practice, produced a spreading of risk that results in those without fault subsidizing damages done by those at fault. This result is not consistent with the traditional tort notion that responsibility follows fault. I am unwilling to conclude, however, that this grievance, however legitimate, will cause responsible citizens to go uninsured, or that the need to address increased insurance premiums or increased litigation outweighs this Court’s responsibility to affirm the value of the family unit. The tort law "crisis” may, in some instances, be overstated, but no thoughtful citizen is unaware that *313there are extremely serious problems in our current system of reparations. In dissenting, I do not suggest that courts should be blind to these realities; I insist only that courts must take particular care that our common-law role as shapers and reflectors of societal values is not overcome by a significant difficulty of the moment.