South Carolina Supreme Court shoots down wrongful life claim

In the Courts. By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. Feb. 14, 2005.

Patients can successfully hold their physicians responsible for many things when it comes to medical liability, but there's one area where the courts have been extremely reluctant to let patients go: A claim for wrongful life.

A recent South Carolina Supreme Court decision followed the lead of other state supreme courts in not letting a child go forward with a wrongful life lawsuit.

The court said there was no cause of action for a now 8-year-old boy born without the cerebral hemispheres of his brain. He sued a physician alleging the doctor should have been able to see the problem in an ultrasound so his mother would have had a choice to terminate the pregnancy.

The legal question is a strange one for courts to handle, prompting judges to ask the tough, deep, life questions usually left to philosophers and theologians. In a nutshell: What is the value of life?

In a wrongful life lawsuit, a child claims that he or she would have never been born if it weren't for the negligence of a physician or other health professional.

The negligence may come in the form of a failure to do genetic counseling. For example, the child claims that his or her parents would have opted not to conceive if they knew there was a risk the baby would end up with a birth defect.

Or, the child may claim a physician was negligent because the doctor missed something on an ultrasound or other prenatal test results that would have shown the fetus would be born with birth defects. And, the child says that if his or her mother knew the results, they would have ended the pregnancy.