Court Opinion

ID: 9652157
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:19:34.847002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:48.927020
License: Public Domain

RAKER, J.,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment because I believe that this Court has the power to recognize a new cause of action in tort. I do not join the majority opinion because I believe that this Court has not heretofore recognized the cause of action in tort for interference with parent-child relations as finally stated by the majority.
I disagree with the Court’s reading of Hixon. In my view, we did not recognized a cause of action in tort as set forth in the Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 700. In Hixon, this *150Court observed that the belligerent words described by plaintiff were a relatively minor interference—indeed so minor that we doubted whether most courts would recognize it as amounting to a tortious interference with custody rights, remediable by damages. We held as follows:
“Consequently we need not decide in this case whether, or, if so, under what circumstances a damage action might lie for interference with visitation rights. We hold simply that a parent or that parent’s ally who, without committing any tort presently recognized in Maryland, speaks hostilely to the other parent about that parent’s exercise of custody or visitation rights does not thereby become liable in damages.”
Hixon v. Buchberger, 306 Md. 72, 83, 507 A.2d 607, 612 (1986). The Court in Hixon’s quotation of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 700 does not stand for the proposition that the Court adopted the tort as set out in that section. In fact, the Maryland cases cited by the Hixon court “state the prerequisites of that tort to be that the parent have the right to custody and that actual service have been rendered by the child to the parent which the parent lost due to the abduction, enticement, or harboring by the defendant.” Id. at 77, 507 A.2d at 609.
In sum, if this Court chooses to recognize a new cause of action, we can do so, but we should say that is what we are doing, and why we are doing it. Otherwise, we should leave these policy decisions to the General Assembly, particularly in an area that has potentially far-reaching social and legal consequences and where the Legislature has previously acted. See, e.g., §§ 9-304 to 9-307 of the Family Law Article, Md. Code (1984, 2006 Repl.Vol.).