Duffee v. Boston Elevated Ry. Co.
| Decision Date | 17 May 1906 |
| Citation | 77 N.E. 1036,191 Mass. 563 |
| Parties | DUFFEE v. BOSTON ELEVATED RY. CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
S. A. Fuller and Linville H. Wardwell, for plaintiff.
Endicott P. Saltonstall and Sanford H. E. Freund, for defendant.
In this commonwealth, except as to matters between husband and wife 'a married woman may sue and be sued in the same manner as if she were sole.' Rev. Laws, c. 153, § 6. The result is that a married woman, who in injured through negligence of another, may recover damages for her injury on her sole and separate account. At the same time, as her husband is bound to provide for her support, he may maintain an action in his own name to recover the expense to which he is put for her care and cure, as well as for his loss of consortium. Kelley v. N. Y., N.H. & H. R. R. Co., 168 Mass. 308, 46 N.E. 1063, 38 L. R. A. 631, 60 Am. St. Rep 397. These are separate actions to recover damages which each suffered individually from the same wrong. Except so far as the consequences of the wrong are to be considered in assessing damages, the liability of the defendant depends upon the same facts in each case; but the actions are as independent of each other as two actions founded on a collision of two teams, caused by the negligence of the defendant, one brought by the driver, a servant of the owner of the team, to recover for his personal injuries, and the other by the owner, to recover for damages to his horses and wagon. The defendant's liability for the damages in the two cases depends upon the same facts, but there is no privity between the plaintiffs. Each is enforcing an independent right.
A judgment in one of these cases cannot be put in evidence in a subsequent trial of the other. A former adjudication is binding only upon the parties to the suit and those who are in privity with them. Eastman v. Cooper, 15 Pick 276, 26 Am. Dec. 600; Sparhawk v. Wills, 5 Gray, 423. As was said in Sturbridge v. Franklin, 160 Mass. 149, 151, 35 N.E. 669, 670, 'It creates no privity between the parties that, as litigants in two different suits, they happen to be interested in proving or disproving the same facts.'
The ruling that the judgment for the defendant in a former action brought by the plaintiff's wife was a bar to the action brought by the plaintiff was erroneous. There are decisions under similar statutes in other states in support of...
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Diaz v. Eli Lilly & Co.
...whether a wife had a corresponding action for loss of consortium of her husband due to third party negligence. In Duffee v. Boston Elev. Ry., 191 Mass. 563, 77 N.E. 1036 (1906), decided nine years later, the same consortium right for negligent injury of the wife was emphatically upheld--to ......
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Lombardo v. D. F. Frangioso & Co.
...it had been indicated or held in Kelley v. New York, N.H. & H.R. R.R., 168 Mass. 308, 311--312, 46 N.E. 1063; Duffee v. Boston Elev. Ry., 191 Mass. 563, 564, 77 N.E. 1036, and Hey v. Prime, 197 Mass. 474, 476, 84 N.E. 141, that a husband could recover for loss of consortium. The Kelley case......
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Blagg v. Illinois F.W.D. Truck and Equipment Co.
...each spouse 'is enforcing an independent right.' " Feltch, 383 Mass. at 607, 421 N.E.2d at 71, quoting Duffee v. Boston Elevated Ry. Co. (1906), 191 Mass. 563, 564, 77 N.E. 1036, 1037. Our General Assembly has determined that "any damages allowed shall be diminished in the proportion to the......
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Fidler v. E.M. Parker Co., Inc.
...they happen to be interested in proving or disproving the same facts.' " (Citations omitted. Emphasis added.) Duffee v. Boston Elevated Ry., 191 Mass. 563, 564, 77 N.E. 1036 (1906). See also Feltch v. General Rental Co., 383 Mass. 603, 606-609, 421 N.E.2d 67 (1981) (because loss of consorti......