Court Opinion

ID: 9618715
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:16:19.152556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:31.480148
License: Public Domain

LAKE, J.,
dissenting: I dissent for the reason that this is an appeal from a judgment sustaining a demurrer to the complaint for failure to allege facts constituting a cause of action. In such a situation, we must accept as true all facts properly alleged, together with all relevant inferences reasonably deducible from such allegations. Gay v. Thompson, 266 N.C. 394, 146 S.E. 2d 425; McLeod v. McLeod, 266 N.C. 144, 146 S.E. 2d 65; Strong, N. C. Index, Pleading, § 12, and cases cited; McIntosh, North Carolina Practice and Procedure, 2d ed., § 1191; and cases cited. The allegations of the complaint must be liberally construed in favor of the plaintiff. Hood v. Coach Co., 246 N.C. 684, 99 S.E. 2d 925.
The majority opinion assumes, for the purposes of this appeal, that the complaint alleges negligence of the defendants which was the proximate cause of this child’s death a few months after birth. In my opinion the allegations of the complaint are sufficient in this respect. The basis upon which the majority opinion rests is that the complaint does not allege that the alleged wrongful death of the child resulted in pecuniary damage to his estate. If the majority’s premise were sound its conclusion would be. Greene v. Nichols, decided this day; Gay v. Thompson, supra.
The complaint alleges: “[P]rior to defendants’ negligence and carelessness as before mentioned [i.e., immediately prior to birth], the said baby was a healthy, normal baby boy.” (Emphasis supplied.) Upon trial, the burden would be upon the plaintiff to prove this, but upon demurrer to the complaint we must treat it as if it were an established fact. It is my view that the presence of the allegation of the health and normality of the deceased in this case and the absence of any comparable evidence as to the condition of the deceased in Greene v. Nichols, supra, prior to her death, is a material distinction between the two cases and sufficient to cause that case to fall outside and this one to fall within the boundary of the zone in which recovery for wrongful death is permitted under the statute.
In Russell v. Steamboat Co., 126 N.C. 961, 36 S.E. 191, this Court allowed recovery for wrongful death of a baby boy only five months old upon evidence that, prior to the negligence of the de*159fendant, the baby “had never been sick.” This Court, speaking through Douglas, J., said:
“This case as presented to us, raises the sole question whether more than nominal damages are recoverable for the negligent killing of an infant, incapable of earning anything, without direct evidence of pecuniary damage other than sex, age and condition of health of the deceased. In the very nature of things a child five months old has no present earning capacity, and has not reached a sufficient state of development to furnish any indication of his probable earning capacity in the future, other than the fact of being a healthy boy. This is all we know of him or ever can know. (Emphasis added.)
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“Upon the greater and better weight of authority, as well as our own convictions of natural justice and of public policy, we are constrained to hold that the plaintiff can recover substantial damages in the case at bar.”
I am unable to distinguish the facts admitted by the demurrer in this case from those established by the evidence in the Bussell case, and therefore am of the opinion that the demurrer should have been overruled.
Higgins, J., joins in the dissenting opinion.