Court Opinion

ID: 9762552
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:26:20.594808+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:35.432659
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
with whom CLIFFORD, J., joins,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because I cannot agree with the Court’s “plain language” interpretation of 24 M.R.S.A. § 2931(3). Slip op. at 5-6. An examination of subsection 3 in the framework of the whole section leads to quite a different meaning. As the Court states, subsections 1 and 2 codify our decision in Macomber v. Dillman, 505 A.2d 810 (Me.1986), that limited the damages recoverable for a failed sterilization that results in *116the birth of a healthy child. Subsection 3 then covers a circumstance not present in Macomber, i.e., the birth of an unhealthy child. Although I agree that the statute does not require that the disease, defect, or handicap suffered by the child be caused by professional negligence, it does require that the child be born as a result of the professional negligence. See 24 M.R.S.A. § 2502(7) (1990) (defining professional negligence as misconduct that “proximately caused the injury complained of’). The case before us does not present an example of causation in the same sense that a failed sterilization can be said to cause a child to be born. At most, the failure to perform an amniocentesis may deprive a woman of the opportunity to consider aborting her pregnancy and prevent the birth of a child. It is the loss of that opportunity of which the Thibeaults complain.
Moreover, negligence that results in a lost opportunity is dealt with in subsection 4. There the Legislature provided that the professional negligence is actionable if the negligence precludes any prevention, cure, or amelioration of a condition prior to birth. In other words, the injury complained of is the loss of opportunity to prevent, cure, or ameliorate a condition prior to birth. Thus Larson’s omission of an amniocentesis that would have disclosed the genetic defect in time to abort Sally’s pregnancy precluded the choice of measures to prevent the condition prior to birth. Unfortunately for the Thibeaults, however, the final clause of subsection 4 excludes any manner of prevention that does not preserve the health and life of the child. That final clause does not undermine a woman’s right to choose' an abortion. Rather it reflects the Legislature’s judgment that a court ought not be required “to determine the difference in value between nonlife and life with defects” L.D. 2400, Statement of Fact (112th Legis.1986).
Because the Thibeaults ought not be permitted to claim under subsection 3 that which is barred by subsection 4, I would affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.