William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

Thus far we have gone on the premise that the defendant acted entirely on his own. At the same time however, we are all aware that he has never presented himself to this court, to the decedent or to the world at large as other than a willing and devoted servant of a most demanding master, to whom his life and works are dedicated. He is widely held as a servant in the Lord's employ, and a diligent member of his working staff.

We reach far back in the history of English law, from which we draw our own, for the doctrine linking the master to damage and injury caused by his servant, and holding the master liable even when done intentionally, so long as it was carried out within the scope of the servant's employment. While we have before us neither direct testimony from the defendant's employer, nor any means of obtaining it, regarding the terms or even the fact of this employment, the defendant's own sworn statement to having been tailed' into the Lord's service is uncontested. He has elsewhere been reported to have spoken directly with his employer, and referred to in contemporary accounts of the event before us as 'the dynamic leader of Christian Recovery for America's People' in his call for the opening salvo in God's eternal war against the forces of superstition and ignorance throughout the world and elsewhere.' There can be no question that, in bringing a new soul into the fold through the baptismal ceremony, he was engaged on his master's business much as, we may recall in Luke 2:49, this selfsame master at age twelve found lagging behind at the temple in Jerusalem by his anxious parents, rebuked them saying 'Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?' and not, in the words of a later English jurist, 'going on a frolic of his own.' In carrying out this solemn assignment, even were there reliable testimony that this omniscient master must have been aware of the risk and told his servant to act carefully, the law still holds him liable for a prevailing share in the consequences. In other words, the master may not delegate responsibility for the servant's acts to him, since under the terms of their relationship he remains ultimately responsible for protecting his servant. This must hold the more true where the instrument of imminent catastrophe is the master's to control, as must the crest and current of the Pee Dee River have been for one who had shown himself capable of stilling a great tempest to save a ship from foundering by merely rebuking the winds and the sea in Matthew 8:26, with which I am sure you are all familiar.

In pursuing your deliberations, I must pause to recall your attention to one more item of testimony which you are instructed to disregard. That is the heated attempt by one witness to indict Satan for meddling in this situation, drawn from the evidence of contemporary records quoting defendant's mention of the great deceiver Satan' causing him to doubt the Lord's purpose. As was held in an earlier case before a district court in Pennsylvania, in which the plaintiff accused Satan of ruining his prospects by placing obstacles in his path, thereby depriving him of his constitutional rights, the complaint was dismissed for its failure to discover Satan's residence within the judicial district, or instructions for the U.S. Marshal needed to serve the summons, and the failure to meet legal requirements necessary to maintain a probable class action, since the class would be so numerous that getting them all together for this purpose would be impractical. I may add that this information could be useful to any of you contemplating a similar recourse in your own difficulties, as the commotion which greeted this testimony in the courtroom provoked by defendant's son indicated to be a serious possibility.

While the allocation of damages should not be allowed to direct your verdict, you must be clear on the law as it views these matters. In general, the damages awarded to the legal beneficiaries in the death of a child are based on his earnings, services and contributions at the time, and more problematically on the loss of whatever prospective economic benefits he might have been expected to provide had his life not been cut short. This Is governed by such elements as life expectancy, health, habits, character, and perhaps particular talents in profitable fields of enterprise. It is quite possible for the cost of rearing, maintaining and educating a child to outweigh the expected benefits, leaving him for all practical purposes worthless. Furthermore, since awards for sentimental family relationships are generally forbidden, and survivors may not seek damages for mental suffering or grief, he may even end with a negative value, going so far as to tempt the defendant, where contributory negligence is involved, to turn the tables and sue for recovery himself.

The future of each mortal being is wrapped in an impenetrable mist, most especially that of a boy who has scarcely embarked upon life's journey. In the annals of law we find, here a substantial award made for a boy of seven who showed promise as a cartoonist, there for another the near certainty of an impressive income in his consuming ambition to become a dentist. Still, in a country where a chief executive is paid a million dollars' salary for managing an automobile company that loses a billion that same year, the odds are hard to call. The decedent might one day have abandoned his calling and, like Babbitt, found it elsewhere in the malodorous realm of real estate development, might have become a writer at the mercy of publishers and starved in a garret or ended it on the spot, might have been lost at sea or gone up as a soldier, become a drunkard and a public charge. We can only speculate with the evidence before us.

The decedent's earnings at the time of death had been gained mainly by picking berries, and his carefully husbanded estate amounted to $4.36, having bought new clothing especially for the baptismal ceremony from his own savings. This earthly estate would appear to corroborate the testimony we have heard quoting Matthew 6:19–21, that he was unconcerned with laying up treasures on earth but rather 'in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.' In the defendant's testimony from the record at the time of the event, 'recalling the day Wayne Fickert made his decision for Christ,' he saw him 'going forth one day from the Christian Recovery Bible Mission School to take the Lord's word to the very farthest reaches of the world.' There, high in the Himalayas, he might have been a priest aspiring to no more than a begging bowl; elsewhere, in the urban din below, he might have pursued the course of rabbi looking forward to a hundred thousand a year; but the humble faith of his fathers, who appear to have been numerous, promised no such economic benefits in computing an award for damages to the survivors since you must exclude from your deliberations any speculation involving the vast sums accumulated by those in the Lord's service who are currently in jail for confusing his assets with their own, or even those still at large living on the scale of the automobile executive who, like the elder John D Rockefeller teaching his Sunday school classes, regard themselves simply as the Lord's stewards.

Under the State of South Carolina statutes authorizing civil actions for wrongful acts causing death, such actions shall be for the benefit, among other relatives not here represented, 'of the parent or parents, and if there be none such' for the heirs at law and so forth. Both parents are parties to this action, the father Earl Fickert as plaintiff, and by joinder the boy's mother Billye. You are here instructed to dismiss the latter's claim on the grounds of contributory negligence on her part, in the assumption of risk in providing her consent as evidenced at the time by 'her tearful gratitude that her son had been baptized and entered the waiting arms of the Lord in a state of grace,' and on the further grounds of her remarriages since the event, reclaiming her name as the boy's mother for the sole purpose of participating in this action.