Court Opinion

ID: 9756463
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:29:46.294561+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:23.061018
License: Public Domain

Ellington, J.
¶31 (concurring) — I concur. The majority thoroughly discusses and correctly construes the wrongful death and survival statutes. Actions for wrongful death of an adult child are not authorized in Washington unless brought by statutory beneficiaries who are dependent on the child for their financial support.
¶32 I write separately to urge that the legislature revise the statutes. A person injured by negligence has his or her own cause of action. In the case of death resulting from negligence, however, the statutes effectively immunize the negligent treatment of vulnerable adults, so long as the negligence results in death.
¶33 I have written on this issue before. In 2001, we decided Schumacher v. Williams, 107 Wn. App. 793, 805, 28 P.3d 792 (2001). Maria Schumacher had Down’s syndrome. She lived in an adult boarding home. She was scalded to death. Like most vulnerable adults, Schumacher had no statutory beneficiaries because no one was dependent upon *493her for financial support. Her brother’s action for wrongful death was dismissed. I wrote separately, urging the legislature to amend the statutes.
¶34 Like Maria Schumacher, Shawn Bennett was developmentally disabled and could not care for himself. Like her, he died as a result of his caregivers’ negligence. Like her, he has no statutory beneficiaries because no one depended upon him for financial support.
¶35 In both cases there is no liability for the negligence and, thus, no deterrence of future negligence and no incentive to improve care. Instead, the statutes essentially encourage fatal negligence in preference to mere injury. This result is irresponsible and unwise.
¶36 Another unfortunate aspect of these statutes was illuminated in Tait v. Wahl, 97 Wn. App. 765, 775-76, 987 P.2d 127 (1999). There, Mary Douglas, a woman who provided a home for her sister’s children and grandchildren, was run down by a truck and killed. Ms. Douglas had cared for her niece, Amber Tait, and her niece’s children from their births. Upon her death, they lost their home and financial security. But the statutes precluded any recovery because their relationship to Ms. Douglas was, by one degree, not close enough to qualify them as beneficiaries.
¶37 This result ignores the realities of modern life entirely and again immunizes negligence so long as it results in death.
¶38 But it is the legislature’s job, not ours, to delineate the beneficiaries of statutory causes of action. And unwise distinctions do not, by themselves, render a statute unconstitutional.
¶39 As before, however, I urge the legislature to revise the statutes.
Review denied at 174 Wn.2d 1009 (2012).