Court Opinion

ID: 9693383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:39:03.103889+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:45.722523
License: Public Domain

LARSON, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in Division II. I dissent from Division I because it acquiesces in the Weitl holding that a viable unborn child is not a “person” under our survival statute, Iowa Code section 611.20.
Weitl places Iowa in the minority of jurisdictions, rapidly diminishing in number, which deny death damages for an unborn child. Moreover, it does not merely stand still in the face of a dramatic trend toward allowing recovery; it actually regresses: While McKillip denied recovery for a nonviable child, Weitl applied the same rule for a viable one as well.
Ascribing to our 1851 legislature an intent to deny recovery under these circumstances or to assume, under the state of modern medicine, that it would have intended to exclude a viable infant under these circumstances loses sight of the purpose of the statute in the first place. The intent was to ameliorate the harshness of the common law denying recovery for any death. When circumstances change, and our knowledge and experience grow, so must our view of earlier statutes.
Here the quest is not properly for the sense originally to be put into it but rather for the sense which can be quarried out of it in light of the new situation. Broad purposes can indeed reach far beyond details known or knowable at the time of drafting....
K. Llewellen, The Common Law Tradition 374 (1960) (Emphasis in original.). Other states have recognized this and have interpreted their death statutes accordingly. See Weitl, 311 N.W.2d at 275-78 (dissent), where these states are listed.
Prom a purely legal standpoint, the Weitl rule lacks any substantial support. Prom a common-sense standpoint, it is absolutely indefensible. All religious and philosophical considerations aside, who but lawyers and judges could argue, in any context, that an unborn infant capable of life on its own is neither a “person” nor a “child” under the law?
I sense that courts denying recovery for unborn children fear that once we begin to obscure this “bright line” of demarcation provided by birth we will be inextricably drawn into a debate about where a new line should be drawn, or where “life” begins for other considerations. Drawing lines is a part of judging, and we do it all the time.
More important, if there is another line which can be rationally drawn, such as the stage of viability, why not adopt it? It would be fairer, and it would make more sense. “Viability” of an unborn child is no more difficult to determine than is a “live” birth under the Weitl rule for, while there is now considerable medical and legal disagreement as to when death occurs, we now have a statute clearly defining viability. See Iowa Code § 702.20.
I would overrule Weitl and reverse the trial court on this issue.
REYNOLDSON, C.J., and LeGRAND, Senior Judge, join this dissent.