Court Opinion

ID: 9884843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:17:17.466372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:47:53.975567
License: Public Domain

Gray, J.,
specially assigned, filed the following dissenting opinion, in which Prescott and Marbury, JJ., concurred.
This appeal involves a challenging question of whether the parents of a stillborn child can maintain an action under Lord Campbell’s Act for their financial loss resulting from the fatal injuries to the child through the alleged negligence of the defendants. There is also the collateral question of whether the personal representative of the child may also recover for its funeral expenses. The majority opinion is predicated upon the determination that a viable child is a “person” within the meaning of the statutes authorizing recovery in these types of cases. This seems to me to be an over-simplification of the problem and I cannot concur therein.
In the solution of this matter we can expect scant help from the English common law because until Lord Campbell’s Act, an action of this type died with the victim. There were many purposes, however, for which the common law recognized an infant en ventre sa mere as having rights and being subject to the jurisdiction and protection of the courts. The most commonplace such situation is where an infant born posthumously to a testator or an intestate takes property from such decedent. However, the universal rule was that such ability to take was. contingent upon the child being born alive. Is it the effect of the majority opinion that a viable child may be a conduit for prop*186erty even though stillborn? Of course, this factual situation is not involved in the pending case but it certainly can be contended that this is the effect of the present decision, deciding as it does that a viable child is a person and capable of transmitting rights to its parents even though never born alive.
At the threshold of this case we must recognize the fact that a suit involving damages for the death of a stillborn infant projects us into a whole new area of uncertainty. It is manifestly impracticable for anyone to know to what extent, if any, the child may be impaired. Many infants are born with disabling defects, especially in the field of mental development, such as epilepsy, hydrocephalic impairment or arrested mental development. To allow recovery by the parents with respect to the unknown quantity of the financial value to the parents of the life of such a child is, I think, to: speculate beyond reason concerning its loss, for it is obviously impractical for anyone to know the potential of a child that never breathed. It seems to me that plaintiffs’ claim in this case may be decided upon the actual terms of Lord Campbell’s Act. This statute permits an action “whenever the death of a person shall be caused by wrongful act * * * and the act * * * is such as would (if death had not ensued) have entitled the party injured to maintain an action and recover damages in respect thereof, the * * * person who would have been liable if death had not ensued, * * * shall be liable to an action for damages, notwithstanding the death of the person injured * * This action is prosecuted upon the theory that the child’s mother became involved in an automobile accident through the negligence of the defendants and that in this accident the child was injured and thereupon died. Some time thereafter the child was delivered stillborn. The saving clause of Lord Campbell’s Act is "if death had not ensued”. If in this case death had not ensued the infant could not, while en ventre sa mere, bring an action for damages for the injuries sustained. The cause of action accrued at the time of the accident and as the child could not then maintain the action, it seems to me that such action would not revive or survive to the child’s parents when after birth it was found that the child was dead.
The majority opinion regards the case of Damasiewicz v. Gor*187such, et al., 197 Md. 417, as “virtually controlling” in this case; I do not so regard it. In that case the child had been injured through a tort while en ventre sa mere. After birth a suit was instituted through a next friend and a judgment for the defendants on demurrers was reversed. This was a landmark case and I do not quarrel with the result. Here was a child condemned to perpetual blindness through the negligence of another, while being carried in his mother’s womb. To have held that he could not recover for his injuries would, I think, have been a monstrous thing. It will be noted in the Damasiewicz case that the right of the child to maintain the action was contingent upon its being born alive. There must be a line of demarcation somewhere and it seems to me far more logical and reasonable to draw that line at birth. The Damasiewicz case involved a viable child, as does the case now at bar, but there are many categories of deformity which have their origin relatively soon after conception. Are we to permit a Lord Campbell’s Act suit where a miscarriage occurs because of some trauma or malpractice in the third month of pregnancy or a suit by an infant after birth because of deformity resulting from negligent action during the third month? I suggest that the majority decision opens a whole “Pandora’s box” of ills. The Damasiewicz case made it crystal clear that there would have been no cause of action but for the fact that the infant was born alive and had sustained permanent injuries by reason of the alleged negligence. I can find no justification for predicating the recovery in this case upon Damasiewicz and at the same time completely abandoning the condition subsequent that the child must be born alive. The whole theory in Damasiewicz was that the child had suffered a trauma through the negligence of another which had resulted in its blindness and that when it became able to maintain a suit it might thereupon do so.
I do not regard Damasiewicz as a safe precedent for permitting a recovery in this action. As indicated in the majority opinion the recent authorities in the United States seem to be in a state of flux. There are, however, as conceded by the majority opinion, well considered cases in which the right to sue with respect to the injury to a stillborn child, is denied. Among the courts which have so decided are those of Massachusetts *188and New York. There are other such cases for which see a note in 10 A.L.R. 2nd, 639, and an article in the 110 Pennsylvania Law Review 554. However, I prefer to rest my views upon the reasoning set forth above rather than to predicate it upon a plebiscite of the current decisions.
The same reasoning applies to the administrator’s claim for funeral expenses. Moreover, the father of the child is charged with the responsibility for its funeral expenses and is entitled to reimbursement therefor as a part of any judgment procured by him against the tort feasor in connection with the injury to his wife.
I would affirm the judgment below. Judges Prescott and Mar-bury have authorized me to say that they concur in this dissent.