Court Opinion

ID: 9699850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:53:53.253738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:58.613566
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I join in the majority’s conclusion that Mrs. Mason has stated causes of action for both breach of warranty and negligence, and that, subject to proof, she may recover damages for all her medical expenses, mental anguish and *496pain and suffering resulting from pregnancy and delivery. I also agree with the concurring and dissenting opinion of Chief Justice O’Brien that “Mrs. Mason should be permitted to seek damages for emotional distress incident to the birth and raising of her third child” and that “the benefits of joy, companionship and affection which a healthy, unplanned child may provide [do not] outweigh, as a matter of law, the cost of raising such a child.” However, I would go even further and hold that Mrs. Mason may recover the entire cost of raising her unplanned child to the age of majority; I disagree with any application of the “benefit rule” to the computation of damages for the support and maintenance of Mrs. Mason’s child.1
The cardinal principle of damages in Anglo-American Law is that of compensation for the injury caused to plaintiff by defendant’s breach of duty.
. . . The primary notion is that of repairing plaintiff’s injury or of making him whole as nearly as that may be done by an award of money.
F.V. Harper & F. James, Jr., The Law of Torts, at 1299-1301 (1956) (emphasis in original; footnotes omitted).
Application of the “benefit rule,” however, undermines this principle. Feeding, clothing and educating an unplanned child entails a certain amount of expense, and it is this expense for which parents must be compensated in order to be made whole. Whatever those expenses are determined to be, they are simply not reduced by the satisfaction, love, joy and pride which an unplanned child may provide his parents. The “benefit rule” would reduce the damages awarded to parents of children who possess these *497endearing abilities, thus preventing the parents from being fully compensated and made whole.
Another objective of tort law is the deterrence of future negligence. The Law of Torts, supra at 743. The application of the “benefit rule” also undermines this goal because it would reduce the damages assessed against a tortfeasor without any regard for the extent of tortfeasor’s negligence.
A final objective of tort law is “avoiding discouragement of desirable activity.” Id. This objective is also undermined by the application of the “benefit rule” in cases such as this.
Society is disserved by a rule which “punishes” those parents who make the effort to raise an unplanned child and who give that child the love and emotional, social and economic support which will help that child become a person capable of returning love and care to his parents, while “rewarding” those parents who can prove to a jury that they cannot or do not provide their children with the love and emotional, social and economic support they need, thus producing children who themselves cannot or do not return any of these intangible benefits to their parents. Society favors and supports those families in which children — including those whose births were unplanned — receive from their parents the love and support they need to grow and develop into loving and supportive adults, yet with the application of the “benefit rule,” “a great anomaly becomes apparent; the more loving the parent, the smaller the damage award and the more the entire family will suffer as scarce economic resources are spread over a greater number of family members.” Kashi, The Case of the Unwanted Blessing: Wrongful Life, 31 U. Miami L.Rev. 1409, 1417 (1977).
The “benefit rule” works an injustice upon the innocent parents of children conceived after a negligently performed sterilization. I would, therefore, permit the parents of such children to recover the full cost of raising their unplanned child to the age of majority.

. I agree with the opinion of Chief Justice O’Brien that defendants should be able to deduct the emotional benefits of child rearing from the emotional trauma of raising a child. However, I do not agree that the “benefit rule” should be applied so as to allow the deduction of benefits received from the child twice — once from the damages for child rearing trauma, and again from the actual costs of child rearing — because this would provide a windfall to the tortfeasor.