Court Opinion

ID: 9760216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:43:24.106931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:09.369260
License: Public Domain

Robert H. Dudley, Justice, dissenting. The issue is whether public policy should be invoked to prevent a common law cause of action against a doctor who is admittedly negligent in a surgical attempt at vasectomy. It was resolved at common law, first in a line of specific, reasoned decisions, that a tortfeasor should be liable for his negligence. Those specific decisions built, by gradual accretion, to the principle of law that a tortfeasor is liable for all damages flowing from the negligent act. That principle became the major premise from which conclusions are now deduced. See Aldisert, The Nature of the Judicial Process: Revisited, 49 U. of Cincinnati L. Rev. 1 (1980). Today, in the case at bar, the majority declines to deduce liability from the major premise of liability for a negligent act and invokes public policy as the rationale to avoid years of well-settled common law. For some time I have been disquieted by the lack of a standard by which we determine when to apply public policy and the lack of a meaningful definition by which we discover what constitutes public policy. This case involves wide-ranging social and economic issues which will affect parents and children for a number of years. Today we have invoked public policy with no true understanding of why it is applied or how it is discovered. The doctrine of public policy has not been built by accretion, but has experienced growth by eruption. I hope, at some later time, to be able to define standards for its use. Perhaps, in the meantime, our friends in academe will be of assistance by writing a deep and meaningful treatise on a suggested doctrine. While I cannot yet define when and why I would invoke public policy, I can define when I would not invoke public policy. I would not invoke the doctrine of public policy when there is no logical sense of conscience. While, in this case, I find many good policy reasons to support the view of the majority I find an equal number of policy reasons against that view. Therefore, I would not invoke the doctrine; instead, I would follow the common law. The well written majority opinion correctly points out many of the holdings including those in Wisconsin and Texas. In Rieck v. Medical Protective Co., 64 Wis. 2d 514, 219 N.W. 2d 243 (1974) and Terrell v. Garcia, 496 S.W. 2d 124 (Tex. Civ. App. 1973), there is the suggestion that the child be considered as worth its cost or else it be put up for adoption. Yet, many parents feel a moral sense of obligation to raise, as best they can, a child unwanted at conception. “A living child almost universally gives rise to emotional and spiritual bonds which few parents can bring themselves to break.” Troppi v. Scarf, 31 Mich. App. 240, 187 N.W. 2d 511 at 519 (1971). I can find no logical sense of conscience for a public policy which requires the mother to abort, put the child up for adoption, or else deprive the family members, including brothers and sisters, of their planned share of family income. “The compensation is not for the so-called unwanted child or ‘emotional bastard’ [see Case Note, 9 Utah Law Rev. 808 (1965)] but to replenish the family exchequer so that the new arrival will not deprive the other members of the family of what was planned as their just share of the family income.” Custodio v. Bauer, 251 Cal. App. 2d 303, 59 Cal. Rptr. 463 (1967). A public policy which subtly encourages abortion or adoption, as today’s holding necessarily does, is inconsistent with the stated goal of family stability and has no logical sense of conscience. Reference is made to the emotional damage of the child who finds out he or she was unwanted, but that emotional injury is no greater “than to be found in many families where ‘planned parenthood’ has not followed the blueprint.” Custodio v. Bauer, supra. The expense of raising an unwanted and healthy child should not be considered as a matter of public policy when we will find that the same public policy allows us to hold that the parents of a deformed or diseased child are able to recover. This is inconsistent, see Mason v. Western Pennsylvania Hospital, Pa. Super., 428 A. 2d 1366 (1980), and demonstrates the consequence of invoking public policy without standards. I would not invoke public policy in order to deny a cause of action against the common law rules of tort damages when there is no logical sense of conscience. I recognize this is an extremely difficult case but rather than invoke public policy I would allow the cause of action and would allow the jury to reduce damages by the “benefit rule,” § 920 Restatement of Torts (Second). It provides: When the defendant’s tortious conduct has caused harm to the plaintiff or to his property and in so doing has conferred a special benefit to the interest of the plaintiff that was harmed, the value of the benefit conferred is considered in mitigation of damges, to the extent that this is equitable. Thus, the jury in setting damages would be allowed to offset the value of the child’s aid, comfort and society during the parents’ life expectancy against the cost of rearing the unplanned child. See Sherlock v. Stillwater Clinic, 260 N. W. 2d 169 (Minn. 1977). I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Adkisson joins in this opinion.