Court Opinion

ID: 9706100
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:31:33.19957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:26.903795
License: Public Domain

ANN WALSH BRADLEY, J.
¶ 89. (dissenting). For the reasons set forth in the concurrence, I respectfully dissent. The concurrence and I part company when it portrays the majority opinion as narrowly writ*165ten. Concurrence at 162.1 read the majority opinion as a significant change of the law under the guise that it is unique to the facts of this case.
¶ 90. In arriving at its conclusion, the majority faces a substantial problem: how to get around Wells Estate v. Mt. Sinai Medical Center, 183 Wis. 2d 667, 515 N.W.2d 705 (1994). This court in Wells Estate refused to recognize a parent's claim for the loss of an adult child's society and companionship. Id. at 675. That is exactly the clam that the Sawyers would like to have argued. Instead, they engaged in creative pleading to circumvent Wells Estate and create a new claim recognized by the majority: third-party professional negligence claim, not based on personal relationship, limited to the pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life that arises as a result of being falsely accused by a therapist's patient of committing sexual abuse on that patient. Majority op. at 139.
¶ 91. The majority's need to distinguish the prohibition in Wells Estate from the present cause of action leads it to remove the limitation that the claim be based on a personal relationship. Under the majority opinion any claimant, regardless of the existence or non-existence of relationship, can dress up a loss of society and companionship claim as a claim for pain and suffering through creative pleading and proceed with a valid cause of action.
¶ 92. Since there is no limitation based on personal relationship, under the facts of this case Anneatra's brother, her uncle, her grandfather, her aunt, her cousins, and two priests could also bring a claim. Moreover, since there is no limitation based on personal relationship, under the facts of the next case, a criminal defendant charged with sexually assaulting the patient, an abusive former boyfriend of the patient; *166or a host of others could also maintain an action against the therapist. Under the majority opinion, all that these individuals would need to claim is that they were inflicted by pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life when a patient under the treatment of a therapist falsely accused them of sexual assault.
¶ 93. Although the majority indicates by its holding that this newly recognized cause of action applies only to harm arising out of allegations of sexual abuse, such a limitation is unconvincing. There is no rational basis to distinguish between sexual abuse and physical abuse.
¶ 94. The majority avows to so narrowly tailor the claim that it carves a niche out of the law that is only large enough to include the unique set of facts from the case at hand. Yet, it fails to do so. Instead it crafts a claim that is without limitation to relationship and which cannot be narrowed to just accusations of sexual abuse. As the saying warns, "Once the camel's nose is in the tent the rest is sure to follow." Rather than limiting the scope of the claim, the majority leaves it wide open. Accordingly, I dissent.