Court Opinion

ID: 9752055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:32:16.760063+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:05.846737
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
dissenting.
The issue raised on this appeal is whether an action for money damages based on the wrongful death and survival acts may be brought on behalf of a non-viable infant, unable to survive because it was born prematurely. The majority holds that such an action may be brought because “a cause of action exists for a child, or actually children, that die after live birth. *159A contrary holding in Hudak would be a departure from this rule.” Coveleski v. Bubnis, 535 Pa. 166, 171, 634 A.2d 608, 610 (1993), n. 3. I dissent from this view.
The parties stipulate that at the time of delivery, the triplets were non-viable, i.e., they were, because of immaturity, incapable of living outside the womb.
Superior Court in the present case was correct in its view that heretofore there existed no cause of action under the wrongful death or survival acts in favor of a non-viable fetus. The legislature defines the “individual” who may bring an action in the wrongful death or survival context merely as a “natural person,” and absent legislative direction that a nonviable fetus is “an individual,” ordinary language usage suggests that it is not. Further, Amadio v. Levin, 509 Pa. 199, 501 A.2d 1085 (1985) simply has no application to this case since it involved a stillborn, but perfectly formed child, who would have been viable had it been born alive.1
Appellants, nonetheless, insist that the Hudak triplets were live-born individuals with full rights under Pennsylvania law, and, thus, that their representatives are entitled to bring survival and wrongful death actions on their behalf. The claim, in essence, is that a prematurely born, non-viable fetus, incapable of independent existence outside the womb of the mother, is an “individual” within the meaning of the wrongful death and survival statutes.
The analysis in Amadio, where this writer dissented to the majority’s view that a stillborn child may recover under the wrongful death and survival acts, is similar to that required in this case. My argument in Amadio, however, has been criticized because it is “circular”:
The second major objection to permitting wrongful death and survival actions on behalf of a stillborn child is the “derivative” nature of such actions. According to this reasoning, neither Act “was intended to provide a recovery in *160cases where the person on whose behalf the suits were brought was never alive,” and “[f]or purposes of monetary recovery, a stillborn child was never alive.” Dissenting Opinion of Flaherty, J. at 2. See also Scott v. Kopp, 494 Pa. at 490, 431 A.2d at 961; Carroll v. Skloff, 415 Pa. at 48, 202 A.2d at 10-11. This reasoning succumbs to the fallacy of petitio principii, commonly identified as circular reasoning or begging the question. Thus a fetus is not considered to have certain legal rights because it has not been born. No reason in logic is given why these rights could not be ascribed to a child before birth, only that they are not. When the question presented is whether or not legal rights should be ascribed, that question cannot be answered simply by stating that the law does not do so.
509 Pa. at 214, 501 A.2d at 1092, (concurring opinion, Mr. Justice Zappala). I cite this analysis of Mr. Justice Zappala because I think it is helpful in providing the direction that our deliberation should take. When fundamental perceptions are questioned, e.g., that a fetus is or is not an “individual,” the justification given in support of the fundamental perceptions will ultimately rest on belief and policy. My reason for asserting that a fetus is not an “individual” for purposes of recovery under the wrongful death and survival acts is the belief that it is absurd to regard a non-viable fetus in the same way that we would regard a living person, and the policy that, as Prosser puts it, some boundary must be set to the consequences of any act:
“Proximate cause” — in itself an unfortunate term — is merely the limitation which the courts have placed upon the actor’s responsibility for the consequences of his conduct. In a philosophical sense, the consequences of an act go forward to eternity, and the causes of an event go back to the discovery of America and beyond. “The fatal trespass done by Eve was cause of all our woe.” But any attempt to impose responsibility upon such a basis would result in infinite liability for all wrongful acts, and would “set society on edge and fill the courts with endless litigation.” As a practical matter, legal responsibility must be limited to those causes which are so closely connected with the result *161and of such significance that the law is justified in imposing liability. Some boundary must be set to liability for the consequences of any act, upon the basis of some social idea of justice or policy.
Prosser, The Law of Torts, § 41, p. 236-37 (4th Ed.1971). To say that some boundary must be set upon liability for the consequences of any act, which is sometimes expressed as a problem in proximate causation, is analogous to saying that the recovery for any given wrong must be subject to some reasonable limitation.
Those who wish to argue that non-viable fetuses should be entitled to bring the actions for money damages sought here would, of necessity, expand the recovery potentially available to plaintiffs in cases such as this, and would insist, presumably, that even though it is the parents who will receive whatever money is awarded, the injury was to the non-viable fetuses as well as to the parents. I, on the other hand, believe that the compensable injury, if such is proved, is to the parents, and that when the parents are compensated, they have been made whole, to the extent that is ever possible in the law. The non-viable fetuses themselves, although they may well be persons in the metaphysical or religious sense, were never lives in being in the sense of persons born and able to continue living, i.e., beings who normally bring lawsuits.
The triplets, therefore, should have no cause of action under the wrongful death and survival statutes, and Superior Court was correct in dismissing these actions. The persons who were injured in this case, the parents, have legal remedy on their own behalf.

. Additionally, Amadio was a 4-3 decision, and since Mr. Justice Zappala has stated in his concurring opinion in Amadio that Amadio does not dispose of the question of "viability” in future cases, it is incontrovertible that Amadio cannot control the present case.