Court Opinion

ID: 9687246
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:20:00.119866+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:25.106076
License: Public Domain

Hallows, C. J.
(concurring). A cause of action does not accrue unless and until the negligent act causes injury. In many cases the negligent act causes simultaneous injury and the cause of action accrues at that time, not solely because the act of negligence then occurred but because the injury also then occurred. Without injury, an act of negligence is not actionable. This seems eminently clear from Holifield v. Setco Industries, Inc. (1969), 42 Wis. 2d 750, 168 N. W. 2d 177, explaining prior cases.1
The question is, what is an injury for the purpose of constituting a cause of action? The majority opinion considers the plaintiff was injured at the time of the alleged negligent blood transfusion in 1962 because of the potential impairment of the plaintiff’s capacity for future childbearing. This so-called injury was unknown to the plaintiff. Realistically no injury, which would give rise to a cause of action, arose until the first child died shortly after birth. This death the majority considers a consequential injury or a result of the improper blood. But the improper blood in the plaintiff’s body was not an injury but a part of the chain of causation allegedly resulting in the death of the child. If the plaintiff had never married, presumably she never would have suffered any actual damage from the improper blood.
*636Obviously the majority’s view of the injury of the improper blood had no consequential effect on the birth of the second child. Under this writer’s view, there was no injury, but under the majority’s view there was an injury but no damage; hence under the majority view, we have a damageless injury. The question of what constitutes a cause of action and the concept of a statute of limitation is basically a question of public policy. I agree this is not a case to reconsider the rule prevalent in some states that a cause of action does not arise until the discovery of the injury; but a physical condition which has the potential to cause definable, compensable damage and is speculative prior to that time is not an injury which ought to constitute a necessary element of a cause of action.
I am authorized to state Mr. Justice Robert W. Hansen concurs in this opinion.

 Reistad v. Manz (1960), 11 Wis. 2d 155, 105 N. W. 2d 324; McCluskey v. Thranow (1966), 31 Wis. 2d 245, 142 N. W. 2d 787; Volk v. McCormick (1969), 41 Wis. 2d 654, 165 N. W. 2d 185.