Court Opinion

ID: 9735557
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:23:33.690275+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:59.924936
License: Public Domain

GARRARD, Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in part.
I concur with the majority opinion except that portion which would permit the parents to recover for mental and emotional anguish (distress) occasioned by the lost opportunity to elect an abortion. I would not, however, as does Judge Friedlander, premise that determination upon the operation of the contact rule.
I would reject permitting such recovery on the basis that such element is too speculative and conjectural. And I do not mean *1128that in the sense that emotional distress always presents a problem of quantification. Our courts have accepted that problem and dealt with it more-or-less successfully for many years. But as I perceive it, the mix here is different. If they are liable, the defendants are liable only for the damages proximately caused by their negligent act(s). Thus, as the lead opinion concedes, damages for emotional distress must be limited to that distress directly caused by the loss of the opportunity to terminate the pregnancy. Certainly these parents suffered emotional distress as the result of giving birth to Kelly with her defects. How does one then distinguish between and compartmentalize the distress attributable to the lost opportunity to abort the fetus from all the other distress attributable to carrying and bearing a child with these defects? What of the distress attributable to learning of the defects and then undergoing the decision and the ensuing effect of terminating the pregnancy? The distress these parents suffered from Kelly’s birth and brief life is both real and substantial. I believe, however, that it is not capable of being separated into distinct derivative portions except in some wholly artificial, and therefore arbitrary and capricious manner. Yet without such separation there is no means of determining the distress for which the physician might properly be held liable. It is for this reason that I find such damages necessarily speculative and not recoverable in the action.