Court Opinion

ID: 9731923
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:01:28.582322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:18.196867
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, J.
I concur in the judgment in this case. Under the present state of judicial interpretations of the several causes of action discussed in the opinion, the demurrer was properly sustained. However, I respectfully request the California Supreme Court to reconsider its rejection of one of those causes of action. That one is the cause of action for loss of filial consortium the court refused to recognize in Baxter v. Superior Court (1977) 19 Cal.3d 461 [138 Cal.Rptr. 315, 563 P.2d 871].
I shall not belabor the reasons. They are similar to those urged eloquently by Justice Pauline Hanson in a recent request from the Fifth District (Nix v. Preformed Line Products Co. (1985) 170 Cal.App.3d 975 [216 Cal.Rptr. 581]) that the Supreme Court reconsider its rejection of a cause of action for loss of parental consortium.1 They have also been stated well in Justice Mosk’s dissent in Baxter. Although the case for allowing recovery for loss of parental consortium may be somewhat more persuasive than the case for allowing recovery for loss of filial consortium, I regard either as far more compelling than the rationale supporting the existing cause of action for negligent infliction of emotional distress. The injuries the plaintiffs suffer are more substantive, more difficult to feign, and more readily quantified and compensated than the momentary shock of witnessing a horrible accident or the insult of mistakenly being told one has a loathsome disease, or the like.
The instant case underscores the problem. If the allegations of the complaint are to be believed, the defendants’ negligence deprived these parents of a healthy, fully normal child and all the long term satisfactions that would mean and instead left them with the long term physical, financial, and emotional burdens of raising a handicapped child. These are the very sorts of injuries a “loss of consortium” action is designed to compensate. How*896ever, since California does not recognize such an action, the plaintiffs’ lawyer had no choice but to attempt to contort this case into the mold of a cause of action for negligent infliction of emotional distress and, alternatively, to call for the creation of a brand new cause of action. This the lawyer should not have had to do. In an era when at least one California court allows unmarried cohabitants to recover for loss of consortium when their lovers are seriously injured2 and the Supreme Court is seriously considering this possibility,3 it is especially difficult to justify denying parents the right to recover for loss of consortium when their children suffer a similar fate.
Appellants’ petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied January 15, 1987. Low, J.,* participated therein. Mosk, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

The California Supreme Court refused to recognize a cause of action for loss of parental consortium in a decision filed at the same time as Borer v. American Airlines, Inc. (1977) 19 Cal.3d 441 [138 Cal.Rptr. 302, 563 P.2d 858]. These cases were filed only three years after the same court had recognized a cause of action for loss of spousal consortium in Rodriguez v. Bethlehem Steel Corp. (1974) 12 Cal.3d 382 [115 Cal.Rptr. 765, 525 P.2d 669].

See Butcher v. Superior Court (1983) 139 Cal.App.3d 58 [188 Cal.Rptr. 503, 40 A.L.R.4th 539].

The California Supreme Court granted a hearing in Elden v. Sheldon (Cal.App.), an opinion which rejected a cause of action for loss of consortium to an unmarried cohabitant of an accident victim. (L.A. 32063, Apr. 25, 1985.)

 Assigned by the Acting Chairperson of the Judicial Council.