Park v. Chessin

In Park v. Chessin (1977) 60 App.Div.2d 80 400 N.Y.S.2d 110, an intermediate New York appellate court considered the following facts. The Parks had had one child born with polycystic kidney disease, a fatal hereditary ailment. The baby died. The parents consulted defendant doctors and informed them of this; assured that the condition would not reoccur, the Parks had a second child, who also had the disease but survived for a short life span of two and one-half years. The court held that these facts gave both the parents and child causes of action, that "decisional law must keep pace with expanding technological, economic and social change. Inherent in the abolition of the statutory ban on abortion . . . is a public policy consideration which gives potential parents the right, within certain statutory and case law limitations, not to have a child. This right extends to instances in which it can be determined with reasonable medical certainty that the child would be born deformed. The breach of this right may also be said to be tortious to the fundamental right of a child to be born as a whole, functional human being." ( Park, supra, 400 N.Y.S.2d 110, 114.) Park v. Chessin, related to claims raised by Hetty Park, her husband and their horribly sick infant. In 1969, Hetty Park gave birth to a baby afflicted with polycystic kidney disease. The baby died five hours after birth. Considering another pregnancy, Mrs. Park and her husband consulted with defendants, the obstetricians who treated her during the earlier pregnancy, and asked whether the disease was hereditary. Defendants allegedly informed her that "the chances of their conceiving a second child afflicted with this disease were 'practically nil.'" (Id. at 407) Mrs. Park became pregnant, and in July 1970 gave birth to a child who also suffered from polycystic kidney disease. The Parks' second diseased child survived two and a half years and then succumbed to the illness. The Parks sued defendants alleging that, contrary to their assertion, polycystic kidney disease is inherited. They maintained that had they been correctly informed of the risks, they would not have chosen to conceive another baby. The Parks sought recovery for emotional injuries and the pecuniary expense borne for the care and treatment of their child until its death. Mr. Park further sought recovery for loss of his wife's services. The Parks also asserted claims for "wrongful life" on behalf of the baby as well as an action for wrongful death. The Court of Appeals addressed whether the Park and Becker plaintiffs had cognizable causes of action. (Id. at 408.) The Court explained that "irrespective of the label coined, plaintiffs' complaints sound essentially in negligence or medical malpractice." (Id. at 410.) The Court held that regardless of the denomination of the nature of their claims, the infants could not recover because "it does not appear that [they] suffered any legally cognizable injury." (Id. at 411.) Because a child does not have a fundamental right to be born free of disease, the Court refused to subject the obstetricians and gynecologists to liability to the infants. "Whether it is better never to have been born at all than to have been born with even gross deficiencies," the Court stated, "is a mystery more properly left to the philosophers and the theologians." (Id.)