Court Opinion

ID: 9623655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:39:19.553952+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:49:50.767709
License: Public Domain

Dore, J.
(dissenting) — The majority asserts that courts should reassess the common law and alter it where justice requires. I agree. However, before altering the common law, this court should do more than look at precedent and then decide the next step. Rather, it should ask whether taking the next step is the right thing to do.
This court must examine the consequences of allowing a child to recover for the loss of parental consortium. Parental consortium consists of the intangible aspects of a relationship: love, companionship and guidance. The majority asserts that money will aid in "the child's continued normal and complete mental development into adulthood." Majority opinion, at 138. By making this statement, the majority is assuming that children who are deprived of one parent's love have difficulties in their mental development. Yet the majority cites no evidence to support this assumption.4 A more likely scenario is that a child is very hurt by the initial loss and, as time goes by, compensates for such loss by relying on other family members and friends to supply love, companionship and guidance. It is only these new and enlarged relationships and not money that can truly compensate the child's loss. This salient point was recognized by the California Supreme Court:
[Mjonetary compensation will not enable plaintiffs to regain the companionship and guidance of a mother; it will simply establish a fund so that upon reaching adulthood, when plaintiffs will be less in need of maternal *142guidance, they will be unusually wealthy men and women.
Borer v. American Airlines, Inc., 19 Cal. 3d 441, 447, 563 P.2d 858, 138 Cal. Rptr. 302 (1977). See also Berger v. Weber, 411 Mich. 1, 18, 303 N.W.2d 424 (1981) (Levin, J., dissenting).
Under the majority's decision, a child whose parent is negligently injured will be given a sum of money which will remain in a trust fund until the minor reaches the age of majority. The money will not be used for the benefit of the child in his minority because there is nothing that money can buy to replace a parent's love. Thus, it is different than when a child is compensated for a tangible loss because there the child sees how the money helps buy things to replace the loss. Here, the child only knows that he received some money because his mother or father cannot treat him like she/he used to. The signal that such an award sends to the child should cause some concern. The child may grow up believing that money can buy anything — including the love of a parent. Or perhaps the child will get the impression that the special relationship he had with his parent was not special after all because it could be replaced by money. Either way, both signals will be detrimental to the child's mental development.
Today's decision, in addition to providing no benefit to the child, does not recognize the fact that liability for one's negligence must end someplace. As stated by Judge Breitel in Tobin v. Grossman, 24 N.Y.2d 609, 619, 249 N.E.2d 419, 301 N.Y.S.2d 554 (1969):
Every injury has ramifying consequences, like the ripp-lings of the waters, without end. The problem for the law is to limit the legal consequences of wrongs to a controllable degree.
See also Suter v. Leonard, 45 Cal. App. 3d 744, 746, 120 Cal. Rptr. 110 (1975) ("[N]ot every loss can be made com-pensable in money damages, and legal causation must terminate somewhere."). Using the majority's reasoning, a child should be allowed to recover where the child had no *143father, and an uncle, who was the child's father figure, was severely, negligently injured. Or a person whose close friend was negligently injured should be allowed to recover where the two had grown up together and had given each other "love, guidance, and companionship". The strongest case for allowing recovery would be where a person's employer is negligently injured, resulting in the employee's loss of employment. In this example, the employee has suffered a measurable loss. The argument for allowing recovery is stronger in this example, in that money is a good compensation for the injury since, without employment, the employee will be without an income. There are many more examples that analytically make sense, yet it is clear that if all injuries were compensated, the courts, and perhaps society, would have great difficulty even functioning.
The majority may argue that for purposes of the present issue, recovery will only be allowed to members of the immediate family. In addition to being analytically unsound, which is the only basis the majority has for extending the right of recovery to the present situation, limiting recovery to members of the immediate family still raises problems. Should a child be able to recover from a parent who negligently injures himself or who is partially responsible for his injury? Should a child be allowed to recover for the negligent injury to a sibling? Should a child be allowed to recover where the injury is only temporary? If so, how long does the disability have to be in order for the child to be allowed to recover: one year? one month? one week?
Under the majority's holding, there is at best a minimum benefit to the child in that he will receive a large sum of money when he reaches adulthood. However, giving money to a child when he reaches 18 will not help relieve the pains he experienced years before. Unfortunately, some pains in life must be endured and overcome by the individual himself. Perhaps it is better this way; sometimes a child should grieve, and learn that a parent's love is irreplaceable.
*144I would have reversed the trial court and dismissed the action.
Reconsideration denied December 12, 1984.

If the majority's assumption were true, then 25 percent of the children now growing up in the United States would have trouble in their mental development since one out of four children live in a household lacking one or both parents. United States Dep't of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (104th ed. 1984).