## Facts

- A father sued in trespass alleging the defendant negligently drove a carriage into the father’s young child.
- The pleading followed the master–servant form, describing the child as the father’s “son and servant.”
- The father claimed consequential damages for (1) deprivation of the child’s services and (2) expenses incurred to treat the child’s injuries.
- The child was about two and a half years old at the time of the accident.
- Evidence showed the father could have placed the child in a hospital for treatment without expense, but instead chose treatment at home.

## Issues

1. Whether a parent may maintain a master–servant style trespass action for loss of a child’s services when the child is too young to be capable of providing services.
2. Whether claimed expenses of cure support recovery where the plaintiff could have avoided the expenses by obtaining free hospital treatment.
3. Whether a different form of action might lie for medical expenses if such expenses were necessarily incurred.

## Decision

- The court held the action was not maintainable on the pleaded master–servant theory.
- Loss of service was the gist of the action, and a child of such tender age was incapable of performing service sufficient to support the claim.
- The father also could not recover expenses of cure because no necessary expenses were shown, given the availability of cost-free hospital treatment.
- The court left open, without deciding, whether a separate action might exist for necessarily incurred medical expenses.

## Legal Principles

- In a master–servant style tort action for injury to a servant (including a parent suing for a child), loss of service is the essential element; without it, the action fails.
- A very young child’s status alone does not supply the required “services” component when the child is incapable of rendering service due to age.
- Medical expenses do not independently sustain recovery in this form where the expenses were not necessary and could reasonably have been avoided.
- The possibility of a distinct claim for necessarily incurred expenses of cure may exist, but it is not established where necessity is not proved.

## Conclusion

The court denied recovery because the father’s claim depended on loss of services, and a two-and-a-half-year-old child could not provide services as required for the action; the father’s elected at-home treatment did not establish necessary medical expenses, and any separate claim for necessary cure costs was left unresolved.


Hall v. Hollander, 4 B. & C. 660 (K.B. 1825)