Spradlin v. Georgia Ry. & Elec. Co.

• Decision Date: 01 March 1913
• Citation: 77 S.E. 799,139 Ga. 575
• Parties: SPRADLIN v. GEORGIA RY. & ELECTRIC CO.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

77 S.E. 799

139 Ga. 575

SPRADLIN v. GEORGIA RY. & ELECTRIC CO.

Supreme Court of Georgia

March 1, 1913

Syllabus by the Court.

On April 12, 1910, S. brought suit against a railway company to recover damages for certain injuries alleged to have been received by him, while he was a passenger upon a car of the defendant, in consequence of the negligence of the company and its employés. Pending that suit S. died, and his administrator was made a party plaintiff. Subsequently, and pending the suit in the name of the administrator, the widow of S. brought suit against the same company to recover for his homicide, alleging that he died in consequence of the injuries out of which grew the suit he had filed. The suit of the administrator proceeded to trial and resulted in a verdict for the defendant. That verdict had not been set aside, and no appeal had been taken from it, when the suit brought by the widow came on for trial. At this trial the defendant urged a plea in bar, which set up the former adjudication and submitted evidence which supported the plea. The court directed a verdict sustaining the plea in bar. Held, that this was error.

Error from Superior Court, Fulton County; J. T. Pendleton, Judge.

Action by Mrs. L. B. Spradlin against the Georgia Railway & Electric Company. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff brings error. Reversed.

Fish C.J., and Atkinson, J., dissenting.

Jas. L Key, of Atlanta, for plaintiff in error.

Colquitt & Conyers, of Atlanta, for defendant in error.

BECK J.

Without discussing the relative merits of the views expressed in the opinion of the majority of the court, and in the dissenting opinion in Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co. v Cassin, 111 Ga. 575, 36 S.E. 881, 50 L.R.A. 694, I do not think the decision in that case controls the case now before us. There a person who was injured settled with the party claimed to be liable for damages, resulting from the injury, presumably looking to the future as well as to the past, and including any claim for permanent injury. The opinion of the majority of the court may be summarized in the following quotation from Tiffany on Death by Wrongful Act, § 124: "If the deceased, in his lifetime, has done anything that would operate as a bar to a recovery by him of damages for the personal injury, this will operate equally as a bar in an action by his personal representatives for his death. Thus a release by the party injured of his right of action, or a recovery of damages by him for the injury, is a complete defense in the statutory action." It was contended that the same rule applied to a suit brought by a widow, under the statute, for the homicide of the injured person, resulting from the injury. The dissenting justices contended that the Georgia statute (Civil Code, § 4424), giving a right of action for a homicide to a widow, or children, if no widow, was not a statute creating a survival or succession to the injured person's common-law right to sue for his injury, but was a statutory cause of action conferred on certain persons for a homicide, and was wholly independent of the common-law action or its settlement, and that another distinct statute (Civil Code, § 4421) made provision for the survival of a common-law action begun by the injured person, and the succession thereto by the administrator.

The present case does not involve a defense based on any act of the injured person in his lifetime, by which it was claimed that he settled or barred a right of action by his widow for his homicide. However it may be as to his acts at his death the sections of the Code above cited distinctly provide for two separate proceedings: (1) A carrying forward by the administrator of a common-law action already begun by the deceased; (2) a right to recover for the homicide by the widow or children. In the former, a recovery can be had for pain and suffering, lost time, physician's bills, etc., accruing prior to the death of the injured person, but no recovery can be had for the "full value of his life." In the latter action, a recovery cannot be had for any of the damages recoverable in the former but for "the full value of the life of the deceased," from the time of his death. The damages recoverable in one...