Court Opinion

ID: 9576855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:29:24.442515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:34.432198
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring:
This action by an unemancipated minor child against his father culminated in summary judgment for the defendant. The precise question before us is whether parental immunity should bar a filial suit for injuries resulting from vehicular negligence. The court’s opinion sanctions filial recovery “to the extent of the parent’s automobile liability insurance”. Although I join the court’s pronouncement, I write separately to give my reasons for acceding to its narrow terms.
Parental immunity was confined at common law to reasonable and moderate chastisement. A parent did not stand shielded from liability for that harm suffered by the child which was caused by behavior unrelated to administration of discipline or was beyond the limits of moderate punishment. T. Reeve, The Law of Baron and Femme 420, 421 (3rd ed. 1862). The American adaptation of the common-law norm came to recognize a far-too-inflated version of the English antecedents. Sorensen v. Sorensen, 369 Mass. 350, 358-360, 339 N.E.2d 907, 909 [1975]; Transamerica Insurance Co. v. Royle, 656 P.2d 820, 823 [Mont.1983]. Parent-Child Tort Immunity: Time for Maryland to Abrogate an Anachronism, 11 Baltimore L.R. 435, 436-439 [1982].
While today’s abrogation of the immunity’s grossly overextended sweep doubtless is conceptually incomplete and may be rested on jurisprudentially fragile underpinnings because it confines filial recovery to insured losses from vehicular negligence, the court’s pronouncement does answer the precise question presented by the facts before us. No more is required by the case. An all-out re-examination of parental immunity doctrine must await another day.