Judgment of 17 February 1989
Annual Review of Population Law 16: 29
1989
ISSN/ISBN: 0364-3417 PMID: 12344368 Document Number: 339549
In France, the plaintiff mother claimed damages from her physician after she gave birth to a severely handicapped child. The court held that the physician had acted negligently in failing to perform a 2nd test that would have shown that the fetus carried by the plaintiff was afflicted with rubella and allowed her to decide to have an abortion. It awarded, however, only moral damages covering part of the suffering that would be experienced by the plaintiff in raising a child that was afflicted with such a serious handicap. It rejected a claim for material damages, concluding that the defendant was not responsible for the actual state of the child.