Court Opinion

ID: 9704307
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:30:18.877361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:00.056036
License: Public Domain

Shanahan, J.,
dissenting.
By uncritically perpetuating the incorrect result reached in Drabbels v. Skelly Oil Co., 155 Neb. 17, 50 N.W.2d 229 (1951), and Egbert v. Wenzl, 199 Neb. 573, 260 N.W.2d 480 (1977), this court has given new meaning to Khayyam’s words:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,' Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line.
[T]he antiquity of a rule is no measure of its soundness. “It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.” Address by O.W. Holmes, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457,469 (Jan. 8,1897).
Commonwealth v. Cass, 392 Mass. 799, 805-06, 467 N.E.2d 1324, 1328 (1984).
As pointed out by Sheldon R. Shapiro, annotator for the work appearing at 84 A.L.R.3d 411 (1978), the question involves a cause of action “where an unborn child was viable (that is, capable of independent existence apart from its mother) at the time of sustaining injuries resulting in prenatal death.” Id. at 415.
When the majority shores up its opinion by reiterating there is “no convincing authority” for recognizing the cause of action today denied by this court, there is disregard of an ever-growing body of law throughout the United States.
*781According to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Amadio v. Levin, 509 Pa. 199, 501 A.2d 1085 (1985), decided on December 4, 1985, from 1949 to the present, 29 states and the District of Columbia have recognized that “survival and wrongful death actions lie by the estates of stillborn children for fatal injuries they received while viable children en ventre sa mere.” 501 A.2d at 1086-87. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania concluded that, based on “the body of medical knowledge” existing today, “the reasons formerly relied on to deny [a cause of action for prenatal injury causing stillbirth of a viable fetus] no longer are persuasive.” 501 A.2d at 1087.
While the majority of this court clings to a rule having its inception in a lack of information, advances in medical science have now supplied evidence of causal connections between alleged prenatal negligence and damage. See, W. Keeton, Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts, Limited Duty § 55 (5th ed. 1984). If courts disregard developments in science relative to causes of action, motor vehicle negligence law will have to be reconsidered, because courts will have to ignore existence of the wheel.
In his scholarly opinion unanimously adopted by the Supreme Court of Arizona in Summerfield v. Superior Court, Maricopa Cty., 144 Ariz. 467, 698 P.2d 712 (1985), decided April 24, 1985, Justice Feldman traces the rule, today reaffirmed by this court’s majority construing Nebraska’s wrongful death statute, directly to the nascent 19th-century case of Baker v. Bolton, 1 Camp. 493, 170 Eng. Rep. 1033 (1808), which probably emerged from the enlightenment of the 18th century. In Summerfield the Arizona Supreme Court, recognizing that person encompasses a stillborn, viable fetus for the purpose of Arizona’s wrongful death statute, held at 477, 479, 698 P.2d at 722, 724:
The majority rule, which now recognizes that a death action will lie under the circumstances present here, acknowledges that the common law has evolved to the point that the word “person” does usually include a fetus capable of extrauterine life. . . . The majority finds no logic in the premise that if the viable infant dies *782immediately before birth it is not a “person” but that if it dies immediately after birth it is a “person.”
. . . We believe that the common law now recognizes that it is the ability of the fetus to sustain life independently of the mother’s body that should determine when tort law should recognize it as a “person” whose loss is compensable to the.survivors. . . .
... By upholding the right of recovery, we join the majority and better reasoned view.
Nebraska should have become the 31st jurisdiction recognizing the cause of action again rejected by this court.
From our orbit in a jurisprudential galaxy, today we have rocketed backward into a black hole and a fate uncertain.