Court Opinion

ID: 9534627
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:41:29.537464+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:29:48.207565
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice
(concurring and dissenting):
I concur in part I of the majority opinion but dissent from part II.
In part II, the majority holds that Utah does not recognize a parent’s cause of action for the loss of a permanently disabled adult child’s consortium resulting from a tortiously inflicted injury. The majority’s holding is technically a narrow one because it applies only to the loss of an adult child’s consortium. To the extent that dicta in the majority opinion implies a broader holding that would apply to unemancipated children and to minors, I make the following observations.
The majority relies heavily upon Justice Zimmerman’s opinion in Hackford v. Utah Power & Light Co., 740 P.2d 1281 (Utah 1987), as authority for its holding. That opinion, however, was not concurred in by any other justice. Justice Howe concurred in the result, and Chief Justice Hall concurred in Justice Howe’s opinion. Justice Durham dissented, and I concurred in her dissent. The majority does not make clear that the lead opinion in Hackford reflected the views of only one member of the Court. Moreover, the issue in Hackford was essentially one of statutory construction— specifically, whether the Utah Married Woman’s Act precluded an action for loss of marital consortium. The statute in that ease has no bearing whatsoever upon the issues here.
The majority also incorrectly asserts that Utah has not recognized any consortium claim. We expressly reaffirmed legal protection for marital consortium in Norton v. MacFarlane, 818 P.2d 8 (Utah 1991). In addition, a parent’s cause of action for the loss of the companionship, society, and affection (i.e., consortium) of a child as a result of a wrongful death has been deemed so important in Utah that it is protected by our Constitution and by statute. See Utah Const, art. XVI, § 5; Utah Code Ann. § 78-11-6; see, e.g., Jones v. Carvell, 641 P.2d 105, 108 (Utah 1982). Indeed, that cause of action provides a remedy for the loss of filial consortium, whether negligently or intentionally inflicted. Oddly, the majority makes only passing reference to these provisions and blithely ignores the fundamental nature of a constitutional policy recognized since statehood. In short, the majority treats that policy as if it were irrelevant to the issue at hand.
The Court asserts the hoary law school cliche that to recognize a cause of action for loss of filial consortium would “open the floodgates of litigation.” However, extending the constitutional and statutory policies in wrongful death cases to a parent’s loss of a child’s consortium resulting from a permanent loss of the child’s physical capacities simply will not open any floodgate. I see no reason to refuse to extend the policies that protect filial consortium in wrongful death actions to cases where a child survives an injury but is so badly injured that the basis for normal filial companionship and society between parent and child is destroyed.
That damages cannot be precisely quantified is not a valid objection to the adoption of a cause of action for loss of filial consortium. The law protects all kinds of human values that cannot be measured by a slide rule, such as marital and filial consortium in wrongful death actions, reputation, privacy, and emotional security from outra*1188geous conduct. Moreover, medical science and psychology have clearly established that a person’s physical health and emotional health are often closely related and that emotional and psychological trauma may have a cause and effect relationship on physical health. The loss of a child’s consortium may well affect the physical well-being of parents.
Certainly, the law need not recognize causes of action for ephemeral injuries or for every form of personal distress that arises from living in a necessarily rough and tumble world. But that is not what this case is about. There is every reason to believe that the loss in this case is both permanent and profound.
I would remand this ease to the trial court for a determination of whether David Boucher was an unemancipated child. If so, I believe the parents should have a cause of action.