Thursday, November 16, 2006

A New Frontier in Tort Reform?

Here's an interesting legal case. A German court has ordered a doctor to pay child support for 18 years of the life of a child that was born after the doc performed a botched contraceptive procedure on the mother. German newspapers are not pleased:

The Karlsruhe-based federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the doctor must pay his former patient, now a mother of a three-year-old boy, 600 euros ($769) a month because she became pregnant after he implanted her with a contraceptive device. "A child as a case for damages -- this perverse idea has now been confirmed by one of Germany's highest courts," conservative Die Welt daily newspaper wrote in an editorial on Wednesday.
This reminds me of similar consternation in this country caused by the recognition of "wrongful life" torts, in which a doctor fails to properly diagnose a birth defect in utero that would have lead the mother to abort the child. The parents and child are compensated for the tremendous cost of caring for the disabled child.

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