[DOWNLOAD] "Luster v. Luster" by Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Luster v. Luster
- Author : Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
- Release Date : January 01, 1938
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 59 KB
Description
QUA, Justice. The trial Judge heard the case upon an auditor's report without other evidence. Pertinent findings of fact by
the auditor are these: The plaintiff is the infant son of the defendant and lived with his parents in Gloucester. The defendant
conducted a store in a small building on premises owned by him adjacent to the home. He also conducted a wholesale fruit and
vegetable business. For transporting produce he used a truck which he kept in a garage about thirty feet in the rear of the
store. On July 6, 1932, the plaintiff, who was then two and one half years of age, had been placed in the charge and care
of his sister ten years of age. She left him for a few minutes in the yard surrounding the store while she went inside to
get some candy. During her absence the defendant came with his loaded truck. The defendant, after having seen the plaintiff
playing near the rear door of the store, negligently backed his truck upon and over the plaintiff, causing to the plaintiff
severe injuries. The Judge granted the defendant's motion for judgment in his favor. The underlying question in the case is whether an unemancipated minor child can maintain an action against his parent for
bodily injury caused by negligence. Probably it should be conceded at the outset that pure logic interposes no obstacle to
such an action. But from the practical viewpoint of sound public policy serious objections present themselves immediately
and forcibly. Such actions, at least when not collusive, would almost inevitably tend to the destruction of the peace and
unity of family life and to the impairment of parental authority and discipline. In the continued intimate contact between
parent and child through the long years of the child's minority many occasions must arise out of which claims, real or specious,
could be made that the parent had been negligent in some matter of commission or omission to the injury of the child. During
the minority of the child such claims, even if valid, commonly could be investigated and prosecuted only through the intervention
of outsiders whose intrusions, not always disinterested, into the intimacies of family life would seek excuse and justification
on the ground that perhaps a cause of action might be unearthed for the benefit of the child. The action now before us was
brought through a second cousin of the plaintiff who was appointed his guardian a few weeks after the accident. An equally
repellant alternative would be the saving up of such claims to be prosecuted by the child himself after reaching his majority,
when the claims may have become stale and the witnesses no longer available. We are unable to accept the theory that the family
as the ultimate social unit is so far moribund that these considerations have ceased to have vitality.