Carl v. Children's Hospital, 702 A.2d 159 (1997)

Citation: Carl v. Children's Hospital, 702 A.2d 159 (1997)
Parent Document: Carl v. Children's Hospital, 702 A.2d 159 (1997)
Jurisdiction: DC (municipal)
Effective Date: 1997-09-23
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2395626/carl-v-childrens-hospital/ ↗

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The authority of a common law court to modify a judge-made rule, where that rule’s intellectual foundations have crumbled, is not limited in the way that Judge Terry suggests.11 In Williams v. Baker, for example, this court’s rejection of the long-entrenched “impact” rule was not “solidly based on a statute or regulation,” or on the Constitution. Indeed, there was no constitutional or statutory provision, nor any regulation, on which this change in the law could be grounded, and none was cited in the opinion of the court. Significantly,- the authorities on which the court did rely in Williams as justifying a major change in judge-made law were the decisions of other common law courts and the views of enlightened scholars and commentators. See Williams, supra, 572 A.2d at 1065-1069. There is no persuasive reason to reject in at-will doctrine cases the very kinds of sources which we invoked in Williams as grounds for relegating the impact rule to oblivion.

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