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Taylor v. Beard3/3/2003
Background
On October 17, 1995, Al Beard was driving a truck for his employer, Southeastern Motor Freight Company ("Southeastern"), eastbound on Sam Cooper Boulevard in Shelby County, Tennessee, when he caused a vehicular chain reaction by striking another eastbound vehicle which, in turn, rear-ended a Ford Windstar van also being driven eastbound by Pamela Taylor and occupied by her minor daughter, Lindsay Taylor. As a result, the Taylors' van careened out of control into still another eastbound car and then went off the south side of the roadway. Both Pamela Taylor and her daughter, Lindsay Taylor, sustained injuries from the accident.
On January 17, 1997, Beard and Southeastern ("appellees") and Lindsay Taylor, acting through her parents, John Sidney Taylor and Pamela Taylor, settled her personal injury claim and sought court approval by filing a Joint Minor's Settlement Petition with the trial court. Prior to the joint petition being approved, Lindsay Taylor, by next friend, filed an amendment to the joint petition which added her brother, Bradford Clayton Taylor, and her sister, Rachel Elizabeth Taylor, as additional plaintiffs and styled the petition as a "Complaint for Personal Injury and Loss of Services." The amendment added new causes of action on behalf of all three Taylor minor children, including an action for loss of parental consortium resulting from the injuries sustained by their mother, Pamela Taylor. The trial court dismissed the Minor's Settlement Petition and treated the amendment as a separate complaint.
The appellees filed a motion for summary judgment on the claims by the Taylor minor children for loss of parental consortium, which was granted by the trial court.
The Taylor minor children, Lindsay Taylor, Bradford Taylor, and Rachel Taylor ("appellants"), by next friend, appealed the trial court's judgment dismissing their claims for loss of parental consortium. Citing the judiciary's limited role in creating public policy, as well as its prior decision in Still v. Baptist Hosp., Inc., 755 S.W.2d 807 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1988), the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court, holding that Tennessee does not recognize a cause of action for a child's loss of consortium due to personal injuries to the child's parent.
We granted the appellants' application for permission to appeal.
Analysis
The appellants argue that this Court should recognize and adopt a new, common law cause of action for a child's loss of parental consortium in personal injury cases. Although the appellants recognize that the common law rule traditionally excludes such a claim, they cite a number of state court decisions that have recognized an action for loss of parental consortium and argue that this Court should likewise allow the minor children of an injured parent to be compensated for the loss of consortium caused by a culpable tortfeasor.
The appellees respond that it is not within the province of the judiciary to adopt a new cause of action for loss of parental consortium regardless of the alleged merits for doing so. Moreover, the appellees point out that a majority of other state jurisdictions have refused to recognize this new cause of action because of policy considerations that militate against its recognition.
We begin our analysis by reviewing the development of the law of consortium. The loss of consortium action had its genesis in early Roman Law, when the paterfamilias, or head of the household, had an action for violence committed against his wife, children or slaves on the theory they were so identified with him that the wrong was to himself. By the Thirteenth Century, the common la
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