Suter v. Leonard

Opinion

FLEMING, J.

Plaintiff Jodie Lynn Suter, a minor, appeals the judgment dismissing for failure to state a cause of action her complaint for $150,000 damages for loss of the “society, care, protection, support and affection of her mother.”

Plaintiff alleged that her mother, Barbara Suter (who is seeking $2,000,000 damages for herself in the same lawsuit) was injured in a 1971 automobile accident caused by defendants’ negligence and as a result incurred physical injuries that left her disabled and unable to care for plaintiff. Until the accident the daughter, born in 1962 and now in the

[746]

custody of her divorced mother, enjoyed the society, care, protection, support, and affection of her mother. Defendants should have foreseen that their negligence would injure persons on the highway and could harm the minor children of the persons injured by depriving them of parental care. Plaintiff asserts she has been substantially deprived of parental care in that her mother has been unable to care for and support her or engage in normal mother-daughter activities. She concedes that no California case expressly authorizes recovery of damages by a child for loss of parental society, care, protection, support, and affection, caused by negligent injury to the parent. Nevertheless, she contends that such a cause of action exists, that her loss is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of defendants’ conduct, that to deny her a right of action deprives her of equal protection and due process of law.

Plaintiff’s claim, viewed in the abstract and divorced from its surroundings, carries both logical and sympathetic appeal. In

Rodriguez

v.

Bethlehem Steel Corp.,

12 Cal.3d 382 [115 Cal.Rptr. 765, 525 P.2d 669], the Supreme Court recognized a right of action in a married person for loss of consortium caused by a third person’s negligent injury to the married person’s spouse. Certain aspects of spousal relationship are similar to those of the parent-child relationship, and there can be little question of the reality of the loss suffered by a child deprived of the society and care of its parent.