Court Opinion

ID: 9744062
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:52:43.417006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:46.462406
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE CLARK, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. This court has no duty to decide philosophical issues. It has a duty to decide cases. The majority, unfortunately, enmeshes itself in a philosophical issue which it has no competence to resolve to the exclusion of a case, that of the deceased infant, Jeffrey Goldberg, which cries out for redress. The majority does not dispute that the allegations of the complaint, which on a motion to dismiss we must assume to be true, make out a classical case of negligence. Defendants failed to inform Jeffrey Goldberg’s parents of the possibility that their child would be born with TaySachs disease, or the existence of tests which would demonstrate that he had the disease. The Goldbergs allege that had they been so informed, they would have availed themselves of the tests, and had they known that Jeffrey would be born with the disease they would have aborted the pregnancy. The majority reasons that the action should not be allowed because (1) Jeffrey suffered no legally cognizable injury, and (2) the injury, even if legally cognizable, cannot be measured. Neither contention, in my opinion, is correct. The majority’s argument against the cognizability of injury rests upon philosophical considerations which, frankly, I do not understand. Granting damages would mean acceptance of the argument “that the child would have been better off not being born at all,” and would entail the “impossibility of entering the shadow world implicit in the suggested comparison of life with non-life.” (113 Ill. 2d at 488.) Therefore, determining whether an injury has occurred in these circumstances is a “matter outside the competence of the legal system.” 113 Ill. 2d at 489. I would agree with the last statement if, by it, the majority means that we are incompetent to determine, in some ultimate ontological sense, whether Jeffrey Goldberg’s life was worth living. What the majority fails to recognize, however, is that a judgment against liability also enters the “shadow world” of comparison between life and nonlife. By its decision today, the court implicitly decides that Jeffrey Goldberg was better off enduring a life of pain, blindness, deafness, paralysis, seizures, and mental retardation, inevitably ending in early death, than not living at all. The court is no more or less competent to render that judgment than to render any other. Given the nature of the birth defect involved in this case, nonlife may have been preferable to life. Tay-Sachs disease is a fatal genetic disorder that occurs in some children and causes the gradual degeneration of the central nervous system. While the child appears normal at birth, symptoms inevitably appear before the child reaches 8½ months. At first the child is noticeably lethargic and development of his motor skills begins to decline. In addition, the Tay-Sachs child now becomes hypersensitive to noise. Between 12 and 24 months the child becomes blind, experiences petit mal seizures lasting for several seconds, is unable to eat because of the deterioration of his respiratory and digestive systems, and loses muscle strength. By the beginning of the third year, the child is blind, retarded, deaf, and completely paralyzed. By 40 months, most Tay-Sachs children will die of infections or other complications caused by Tay-Sachs. (Paritzky, Tay-Sachs: The Dreaded Inheritance, American Journal of Nursing 260, 260-64 (March 1985).) The majority provides no support for the notion that such a short life of excruciating pain, devoid of any redeeming benefits, is preferable to nonlife. As Justice Rizzi wrote in his dissent in the appellate court: “[T]he sober reality with which we, as judges, must come to grips is that Jeffrey Goldberg endured immense pain and suffering that he would not have had to endure had defendants not been negligent. To hold that he was not injured as a result of defendants’ negligence not only shunts reality but also imposes a cruel hoax upon the people involved in these tragic circumstances.” 128 Ill. App. 3d 1029, 1045 (Rizzi, P.J., dissenting). It is surely small comfort to the child to know that the majority believes his life was worth living. Moreover, the majority’s reliance upon a philosophical bar to wrongful life actions does not find support in some of the very decisions the majority cites. For example, while stating a position consistent with the majority’s view on the incalculability of general damages, the California Supreme Court rejected any philosophical bar to the award of extraordinary damages. The court reasoned: “Although it is easy to understand and endorse these decisions’ desire to affirm the worth and sanctity of less-than-perfect life, we question whether these considerations alone provide a sound basis for rejecting the child’s toft action. To begin with, it is hard to see how an award of damages to a severely handicapped or suffering child would ‘disavow’ the value of life or in any way suggest that the child is not entitled to the full measure of legal and nonlegal rights and privileges accorded to all members of society. Moreover, while our society and our legal system unquestionably place the highest value on all human life, we do not think it is accurate to suggest that this state’s public policy establishes — as a matter of law — that under all circumstances ‘impaired life’ is ‘preferable’ to ‘non-life.’ ” Turpin v. Sortini (1982), 31 Cal. 3d 220, 232-33, 643 P.2d 954, 961-62, 182 Cal. Rptr. 337, 344-45. The majority is of course correct that the preponderance of authority opposes the award of general damages for wrongful life. But it is worth noting that there is a growing body of persuasive opinion to the contrary. (See Turpin v. Sortini (1982), 31 Cal. 3d 220, 643 P.2d 954, 182 Cal. Rptr. 337; Procanik v. Cillo (1984), 97 N.J. 339, 478 A.2d 755; Harbeson v. Parke-Davis, Inc. (1983), 98 Wash. 2d 460, 656 P.2d 483.) Moreover, some lower courts have awarded general damages for wrongful life. (See, e.g., Curlender v. Bio-Science Laboratories (1980), 106 Cal. App. 3d 811, 165 Cal. Rptr. 477.) Many commentators also advocate recognition of the tort. (See, e.g., Kashi, The Case of the Unwanted Blessing: Wrongful Life, 31 U. Miami L. Rev. 1409 (1977).) Finally, decisions to deny general damages have often drawn vociferous dissents. See, e.g., Turpin v. Sortini (1982), 31 Cal. 3d 220, 240, 643 P.2d 954, 966, 182 Cal. Rptr. 337, 349 (Mosk, J., dissenting); Procanik v. Cilio (1984), 97 N.J. 339, 363, 478 A.2d 755, 768-69 (Handler, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Moreover, imposition of liability in this case would have real and practical benefits. It would further the usual purposes of tort law: allocation of risk, compensation and deterrence. Recognition of liability here would allocate the costs of negligent genetic screening to the party who receives the financial benefit from medical supervision of pregnancy, the attending physician. It would deter the provision of inaccurate advice. It would compensate the victim for his suffering, in circumstances where that suffering prevents him from deriving any tangible benefit from his own existence. Moreover, these benefits must be weighed against the consequences of the majority’s decision. From today, physicians will have less incentive to give careful advice to parents faced with the difficult (and constitutionally protected) decision of whether to abort a child who may, as in this case, be bom to a very short life of excruciating pain. Moreover, I do not agree with the majority’s conclusion that damages are inherently unascertainable. The plaintiffs propose that the trier of fact assess the burdens attributable to the child’s birth with congenital defects against the benefits the child can derive from life despite the defects. (See Rogers, Wrongful Life and Wrongful Birth: Medical Malpractice in Genetic Counseling and Prenatal Testing, 33 S.C.L. Rev. 713, 738 (1982).) In any case in which those benefits outweighed the burdens, there would be no recovery. In any case in which the burdens outweighed the benefits, the recovery would be that amount by which the trier of fact found the burdens exceeded the benefits. Such a calculation would be no more difficult than the calculation of damages for loss of society, or, for that matter, the calculation of any award for pain and suffering. In the case of Jeffrey Goldberg, afflicted with Thy-Sachs, the trier of fact might be justified in finding that the burdens of a life which consists of four years of excruciating physical pain and mental retardation do not exceed its benefits. In the case of a person afflicted with congenital blindness or deafness, the trier of fact might be justified in finding otherwise. Given widespread medical knowledge of Thy-Sachs, and the fact that it is confined to Ashkenazic Jews of eastern European origin, a trier of fact might well determine that a physician would be negligent in failing to inform parents of Jewish, ancestry that their child might be bom with TaySachs. In any case, the extent of medical knowledge about the disease, as well as the costs and risks of fetal testing, need not be addressed on a motion to dismiss. I would reverse the judgment of the appellate court, and therefore I dissent. JUSTICE SIMON joins in this dissent.