Court Opinion

ID: 9758798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:46:48.59089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:56.035171
License: Public Domain

Clifford, J.
(dissenting). Neither precedential compulsion of this Court’s prior decisions nor the persuasive effect of any relevant policy considerations leads me to the conclusion that this suit should be allowed. Because I think it should not, I would affirm the summary judgment entered for defendant.
I come to this case with the view that the doctrine of intrafamily immunity still survives in New Jersey, except in automobile negligence cases. Immer v. Risko, 56 N. J. 482 (1970), and France v. A. P. A. Trucking Corp., 56 N. J. 500 (1970), abrogate the immunity only to the extent of permitting, between husband and wife and between parent and child, suits for personal injuries consequent upon negligent operation of a motor vehicle. The opinions in those cases painstakingly so limit themselves, with their precedential value likewise being circumscribed.
While I readily concede that I might very well be willing to extend the abrogation of the immunity further in a variety of situations, I am reminded by Justice Hall’s opinion for the Court in Hastings v. Hastings, 33 N. J. 247, 250 (1960), that
[m]atters of immunity must be determined, in the absence of specific legislation, on the basis of policy or, perhaps more accurately, on the weighing of competing policies. * * * In situations other than the precise one before us, consideration of the policies in the light of specific facts may lead to different results, but it will be time enough to announce a conclusion on them when the occasion is specifically presented to us.
*249And so I confine myself to the specific facts of this case in which, as in Heyman v. Gordon, 40 N. J. 53 (1963),- the real and only party in interest is the son. A cause of action is asserted on his behalf under the wrongful death act, N. J. 8. A. 3A:31-1, et seq., seeking from his father money damages for allegedly causing the death of the boy’s mother either by murder or by grossly negligent and wantonly reckless conduct. While the claim doubtless would survive, by virtue of the impact of France on Eeyman, were it grounded in negligent operation of an automobile, entirely different policy considerations1 are implicated when the case is based on an intentional wrong. Here the focus is generally acknowledged to be on family harmony and domestic tranquility. See McCurdy, “Torts Between Persons in Domestic Relation,” 43 Harv. L. Rev. 1030, 1074-76 (1930); Comment, “Intra-family Immunity — The Doctrine and Its Present Status,” 20 Baylor L. Rev. 37, 57 (1967); Chopin, “Parent-Child Tort Immunity: A Rule in Need of Change,” 37 U. Miami L. Rev. 191, 194-95 (1973).
Thus, I see the essential policy questions as first, whether allowance of the suit will tend to threaten the relationship between this father and this son — a relationship which at this point, as so well put by Judge Conford, is presumptively a normal and loving association and one of “incalr *250enlabie benefit to the child;” and second, whether in the circumstanecs this Court should vindicate the right of the infant to sue.
■ Because I believe the question of the child’s best interests and the issue of domestic tranquillity in the form of the father-son relationship are, in this case, so inextricably intertwined as to be substantially identical, I would adopt the perceptive analysis of Judge Conford but would not, as he would, defer resolution of the first question. The record before us is sufficiently enlightening as to lead me to the firm conclusion that a relationship worth preserving would be subjected to a serious risk of damage were this litigation to go forward. I so conclude precisely for the reasons set forth at greater length in Judge Conford’s dissent. What little I would add follows.
. The suspicion is strong that the boy, Scott Rockfeld, is somehow being used as the innocent pawn in an acrimonious dispute between plaintiff, Clara Small, and defendant. That the intention is to punish defendant is made abundantly clear, if not by what surfaced in defendant’s separate action for declaration of his wife’s death2 and in the proceedings to establish the grandparents’ visitation privileges, then certainly by the claim, in the complaint for punitive damages.3 I recognize that I cannot indulge the stated suspicion as a ground for decision herein and hasten to assure that my conclusion would he the same were some more neutral party acting as administrator ad prosequendum. The grandmother would, in any event, remain the driving force behind this *251litigation. Obviously, at his tender age the child is incapable of making a decision as to whether he wants to sue his father. If that decision were within his capabilities, and assuming the reliability thereof, I might not view that circumstance as entirely determinative, but it would be persuasive in allowing a suit under otherwise similar facts because of the clear absence of any harmony susceptible of being preserved.
In my approach to our problem the answer to the second essential policy question — whether in the circumstances this Court should uphold the right.of the infant to sue — follows automatically from my perception of the litigation as posing an unwarranted risk of disruption of the father-son relationship. I view the hoped-for reconstruction of the family, here threatened by the very judicial process whose every effort should be in the direction of preservation of that .relationship, as being of a superior social value to the vindication of any remedy of the son vis-a-vis his father. (It is no answer to point to the father’s intentionally wrongful conduct as having destroyed the family unit; the Florida criminal process may be relied on to vindicate society’s interest in seeing to it that Dr. Roekfeld does not “get away with murder-.”) The need to expose the “truth” is insufficient justification for promoting the quest for dollars at the expense of the interests of familial harmony. At least that is so in this ease where, as we are informed by counsel, plaintiff’s attorney has substantially all of the information available to the Florida prosecuting authorities. Should the infant want at some future time to satisfy his curiosity as to what the evidence shows with respect to his mother’s death, that should be available from the attorneys in an atmosphere free of the acrimony which any trial would engender. As noted, his father’s version is already memorialized in a lengthy transcript.
Extracting and identifying the various considerations which contribute to a determination of just policy in this delicate area is á most difficult undertaking. Evaluating them after they have been thus isolated is equally hazardous. *252The complexity of the problem is increased by the triangular nature of the relationships in this case — not the “straight-line” relationships of husband-wife or parent-child, but a three-way interplay involving the impact on the son of what the father did to the mother.
That complexity is heightened even further by the knowledge that the purported beneficiary of this action cannot speak or reason for himself. The ease at bar is one of a special category wherein there is a potential for the intrusion of interests other than those of the beneficiary. That element bespeaks the necessity of intensifying a court’s concern for familial harmony. Particularly is this so where the jaundiced perspective of an interloper or one on the periphery of the father-mother-son relationship might adversely affect what remains of the family unit. This special class of cases not only rasies doubts as to the future of the majority’s blanket abrogation of intrafamily immunity, but it also strengthens my inclination to adopt an ad hoc, case-by-case approach to this area of family law. One may thus question whether, by moving from the pre-Immer and France position of in-trafamily immunity in all instances to the opposite extreme of almost total abrogation of the doctrine, the majority has missed the mark. It has at least turned its back on the salutary notion that when an established doctrine is attacked as outmoded, any erosion at the hands of a court is customarily gradual. Hastings v. Hastings, supra, 33 N. J. at 261 (dissenting opinion of Jacobs, J.). We are in a maze-like and enormously sensitive field of the law, made the more so by fact patterns heretofore perceived only dimly and by policy considerations explored not in depth. That circumstance mandates, at a minimum, a more cautious step-by-step process of change than the sweeping and abrupt one pursued by the Court.
Because this dimension of complexity simply adds to the inherent formidability of the task of articulating any general rule, I would go no further than deciding that, for the reasons expressed in Judge Conford’s dissent as supplemented *253herein, the threat to the father-son relationship in this case dictates disallowance of the action.
Finally, while my discussion and conclusions may not bear a stamp of inspired certainty, I suppose in the final analysis I have only my own instincts and experience, my notions of human relations and their nuances, on which to rely, and admittedly they may not be very reliable. The judicial function here calls for a certain predictive skill. I am acutely conscious of the fact that “[a] judicial approach does not make the future more readily foreseeable and the assurance of our decision, whatever it be, is unfortunately circumscribed by the frailties of human judgment.” Lavigne v. Family & Children’s Soc’y of Elizabeth, 11 N. J. 473, 483 (1953) (Wachenfeld, J., dissenting).
I would affirm.

The prevalence of automobile liability insurance is plainly at the root of the abrogation of intrafamily immunity in automobile cases. See Immer v. Risko, supra, 56 N. J. at 489. With no intention of attempting resurrection of an equine beast of burden long since flailed to death, I am nevertheless constrained to express wonderment at the curiously circular reasoning which uses insurance as the justification for the imposition of liability. I take it the analysis runs something like this: liability insurance is a contract to indemnify one for the money damages flowing from one’s legal liability; in the typical situation (wife sues husband or unemancipated child sues parent on account of personal injuries resulting from negligent vehicular operation) the courts will permit the imposition of legal liability because of the presence of insurance. Or put somewhat more simplistically: if there is legal liability, there is insurance; if there is insurance, there is legal liability. See also the dissenting opinion of Francis, J., in Immer v. Risko, supra, 56 N. J. at 496-499.

In that action Dr. Rockfeld testified fully and completely under oath, without resort to any privilege against self-incrimination, for hundreds of pages of transcript and was vigorously and indelicately cross-examined as to the circumstances of the occurrence giving rise to this suit.

Punitive damages are clearly not allowable under this wrongful death action, Kern v. Kogan, 93 N. J. Super. 459 (Law Div. 1967), even under the majority’s view of the case.