Court Opinion

ID: 9634528
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:16:01.30701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:04.591519
License: Public Domain

SCHREIBER, J.,
dissenting.
The majority implicitly clings to the rule that there is no cause of action for “wrongful life,” but its reasoning completely undercuts the rule’s raison d’etre. It accepts the thesis that the infant has no cause of action based on whether he or she should not have been born. It accepts the public policy that the child’s existence outweighs any discomfort the parents might endure in rearing and caring for the child. The consequence of adopting these propositions is that the, parents can have no claim for medical expenses unless they are injured in their own right. Conversely, once the parents are held to have such a claim, it follows logically and conceptually that the child should be entitled to recover for its incapacity and the parents for the added costs in rearing the child.
It is well established that parents’ claims for medical expenses incurred in curing and caring for their child depend on the liability of the third person to the child. See Orr v. Orr, 36 N.J. 236 (1962); Berry v. Berry, 120 N.J.Super. 452 (App.Div.1972); Vanhorn v. Freeman, 6 N.J.L. 322 (Sup.Ct.1796). This condition precedent is logical, sound and just. It is self-evident.
It is necessary to understand that the direct right which Berman v. Allan, 80 N.J. 421, 432 (1979), endorsed was enunciated in Chief Justice Weintraub’s dissenting opinion in Gleitman v. Cosgrove, 49 N.J. 22, 64-65 (1967). This right, belonging to the mother, was her option to accept or reject a parental relationship with the child. Denial of that option constituted the breach. The damages caused by the breach were those flowing *72from the emotional impact upon becoming aware of the denial of that option. They did not include medical expenses.1 The Chief Justice explained:
But there is an injury to the mother, and the question is whether a claim for the infant’s cure and care can be said to flow from that injury. Even though there is an obvious connection between the loss of the option to abort and those costs, it seems to me that the parent’s claim for the infant’s cure and care must ultimately presuppose it would have been to the child’s own interest not to have been born. The claim for cure and care is the child’s, whether it is asserted on the child’s behalf against a wrongdoer or against the mother or father or anyone else who in law must furnish it, and when a parent seeks to shift that burden to a tortfeasor, it must be, I think, upon the premise that the tortfeasor did a wrong to the child. If the child’s estate bore the cost of cure and care as in some cases it might, the child could not recover that cost from the physician for the reason already given. It would be anomalous to say that a physician, although not liable to an infant who incurred that dollar loss, must pay for it when someone else, whether father, mother, other relative, or the State itself, incurs the expense. [49 N.J. at 64]
I would affirm.

 Berman expressly rejected plaintiffs’ claims for medical expenses and traced Chief Justice Weintraub’s rationale holding that damages were to be measured in terms of the emotional stress caused by loss of the option to accept or reject a parental relationship. 80 N.J. at 432-433.