Utah Supreme Court Case: Benda v. Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City
CALL/TXT UTAH PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEY JAKE GUNTER (801) 373-6345. LET HIS 20 YEARS’ EXPERIENCE WORK FOR YOU
The Utah Supreme Court recently decided the case of Benda v. Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, in which it recognized a new cause of action for loss of filial consortium for minor children. You are probably familiar with the concept of spousal consortium, which allows the spouse of an injured or deceased person to recover damages for the love, affection, companionship, comfort, society, or sexual relations that are lost due to the spouse’s injury or death. Filial consortium takes this concept and extends it to situations where a person’s child is the injured or deceased party—obviously filial consortium does not include sexual relations since incest is a crime, but the rest of the definition of spousal consortium applies.
In Benda, a 14 year old student at Juan Diego Catholic High School suffered life threatening injuries when he fell 30 feet from a lift while working as part of the crew for the school’s drama production. The parents sued the school and the Diocese of Salt Lake City for a number of things, including loss of filial consortium. Up to this point, filial consortium had not been recognized as a cause of action in the State of Utah (or in many other states). In fact, an earlier Utah case specifically denied filial consortium as a cause of action. However, that earlier case differed from Benda in three important respects: 1) spousal consortium had not been recognized as a cause of action at that point, 2) loss of consortium claims had only been recognized in wrongful death cases, not in cases involving non-fatal injuries, and 3) that case involved an adult child, rather than a minor child. Based on these differences, the Utah Supreme Court now saw no reason not to recognize loss of filial consortium as a cause of action.
What does this mean for you?
1) There is now the potential for larger damages in injury and wrongful death cases involving minor children based on this new cause of action. Whether damages will be awarded is very dependent on the jury in a given case, but the potential is definitely there.
2) There is a very real possibility that this new cause of action will be extended to include adult children, as well as minor children, but the law is obviously still developing so stay tuned.
3) There is also potential that this cause of action could be applied when it is a parent who is injured or killed, rather than the child. Utah courts haven’t had the opportunity to address this issue yet, but it seems like a natural extension of the new filial consortium cause of action.
4) If you have questions about whether this new cause of action may have an effect on your case, call an experienced Provo Lawyer at Howard, Lewis & Petersen for more information.
CALL/TXT UTAH PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEY JAKE GUNTER (801) 373-6345. LET HIS 20 YEARS’ EXPERIENCE WORK FOR YOU
