You must be kidding me.
Sperm bank sued under product liability law.
My jaw is agape and my brain is confused.
What jury would ever even be able to wrap their head around this case? Are they going to call a panel of philosophers as experts?
When I first started working at the firm, the world of law dealt quite a shock to my psyche and required a fairly substantial adaptation. The first and main vehicle for this learning curve was a wrongful death case involving a five year old girl. I had to rearrange many of my brain’s data stacks on The Way The World Works in order to accommodate burned memories of the photographs of a lifeless five year old girl laid across the double yellow on a highway. It was one of several benchmarks in my life that drove home, beyond a superficial degree, the reality of the concept that life is not fair, it owes you nothing, and there are zero guarantees. Nothing a five year old could ever do would justify this fate.
That was enough on its own, but the additional blow from learning that her case was valued at a relatively small number due to her uncertain earning capacity (whereas a wrongful death claim for an adult would hinge on their earning capacity based on employment history) was mind boggling to me. Sure, how do you put a price on ANY life, young or old, but I do understand the concept: I get that civil cases are an attempt to make one whole after they are somehow wronged, and due to our inability to travel back in time and stop Wrong, we have to rely on monetary compensation to make someone “whole”. When someone accidentally drops their piano on you, we can’t undo your broken bones, but we can give you some money to repay you for medical bills and lost wages (economic damages) and pain and suffering (non-economic damages). Pretty bunk system if you ask me, but I can think of no alternatives. But to “repay” someone for losing a child with anything less than one bagazilljillion dollars was something I did not understand at all.
As a result of this exposure, I have slowly come to terms with the way law works, cold and pragmatic as it may be. It is with this in mind that I say the following: LEGALLY speaking, I could fathom how the mother of a learning disabled sperm bank baby might be able to sue the sperm bank or donor under products liability law. I can fathom it. It would be cold and cruel – because how do you tell your child you’re suing for money to be reimbursed for dealing with him or her? That’s pure crap. But legally speaking, ok. You paid for a product, and due to it’s tarnished nature, you have ended up with the “pain and suffering” of a learning disabled child and costs for specialty care. That is, of course, if you can somehow find a line to draw between acceptable genes and unacceptable ones – because we all know there is no such thing as a set of flawless genes. Impossible. But supposing one could get past that argument, you might have a case.
But THIS, at least according to the article, is a lawsuit being brought on behalf of the child who resulted from this faulty product. So…let’s just backtrack for a moment here. See above where I explain that the purpose of civil suits is to make someone “whole” after they are harmed in some way. That is the idea. It just so happens that most often, money is the best we can do. But the spirit of the idea is to undo what was done. So…if the harm this child suffered was being handed a set of genes that were a bit screwy…well then wouldn’t she be made whole by being NOT born? Aren’t they basically asking for someone to say, “So, shall we put her out of her misery? I think euthanasia is legal in such and such a place…” It’s absurd. She is only ALIVE because of these genes. And to suggest that she is owed money because of those genes is to suggest that she’d be better off dead.
::throws up hands in disgust::
Case closed.
