Court Opinion

ID: 9849281
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:37:36.216243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:13.507355
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Concurring.
This is indeed a tragic case. A diagnostic blood test performed under a state-mandated program1 that screens California-born babies for certain inherited disorders showed that plaintiff Sierra Creason had tested “negative” for congenital hypothyroidism. A few months later, however, the family doctor determined that Sierra had no thyroid gland and that her condition had progressed to irreversible mental retardation. Although the state-mandated test here was properly performed under the testing procedure established by the State Department of Health Services (Department), plaintiffs allege that the Department negligently determined not to report certain test results as indicating possible hypothyroidism.
The majority holds, and I agree, that the Department is not liable for injuries resulting from congenital disorders that its testing program failed to detect in a particular case. In establishing the neonatal program at issue, the Legislature sought to reduce the “often costly, tragic, and sometimes deadly burdens to the health and well-being of the citizens of this state” (Health & Saf. Code, § 124975, subd. (b)) caused by hereditary disorders and to “contribute to the further understanding and accumulation of medical knowledge [about such disorders] that may lead to their eventual alleviation or *639cure” (id., subd. (c)). Neonatal screening leads to preventive treatment of those children found to have hereditary disorders. In Sierra’s case, tragically, the Department’s test report failed to alert her parents and family doctor that Sierra suffered from hypothyroidism.
But to impose civil liability on the Department here and in any similar future case may well threaten the continuation of a generally beneficial statewide program that has screened millions of California, babies for disabling congenital disorders. In a recent newsletter, the Department pointed out that between 1980 and 1995 approximately 99 percent of babies bom in California were tested and that the screening of 7,443,147 infants detected 2,271 cases of congenital hypothyroidism. (Newborn Screening News, California’s Newborn Screening Program (Cal. Dept. Health Services, Summer 1996) p. 6.) As the Law Revision Commission stressed in 1963, when it urged the Legislature to insulate government agencies from liability for mass public health screening programs, “Far more persons would suffer if government did not perform these functions at all than would be benefited by permitting recovery in those cases where the government is shown to have performed inadequately.” (Recommendation Relating to Sovereign Immunity, No. 1, Tort Liability of Public Entities and Public Employees (Jan. 1963) 4 Cal. Law. Revision Com. Rep. (1963) p. 831.)
The facts of this case are heartrending, and the desire to afford the stricken child and her parents some measure of comfort and financial assistance is strong. But these considerations alone cannot dictate the outcome in this case. The Legislature’s decision to provide a generally beneficial neonatal medical screening program without state liability is one we must respect. Nor is it a heartless decision, for if the alternative is not a program with liability but no program at all, more rather than fewer of these tragedies would result.

The Hereditary Disorders Act appears in Health and Safety Code section 124975 et seq.