Brown v. Brown

• Decision Date: 05 March 1914
• Citation: 88 Conn. 42,89 A. 889
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: BROWN v. BROWN.

89 A. 889

88 Conn. 42

BROWN

v. BROWN.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

March 5, 1914.

Appeal from Superior Court, Middlesex County; William H. Williams and Marcus H. Holcomb, Judges.

Action by Elizabeth C. Brown against Thomas S. Brown. From a judgment for defendant, plaintiff appeals. Reversed and remanded for further proceedings.

Daniel J. Donohue and Bertrand E. Spencer, both of Middletown, for appellant.

Frank D. Haines, of Middletown, for appellee.

THAYER, J. The plaintiff by this action seeks to recover damages from her husband for an assault and battery and false imprisonment. The parties were married in October, 1877. If she has a cause of action against her husband, it is not questioned that the suit is well brought. The complaint is demurred to; the only ground of demurrer assigned being that, by reason of her coverture, she has no cause of action against him for the personal Injuries alleged in the complaint. The superior court sustained the demurrer, and the only question presented by this appeal is whether that ruling was correct.

By the common law the husband might restrain the wife of her liberty and might chastise her. 1 Blackstone, Com. 444. "The law which attached such subjection to the legal status of a married woman has been abolished, but not by direct legislation; it has disappeared under the continuous pressure of judicial interpretation or indirect legislation." Mathewson v. Mathewson, 79 Conn. 23, 27, 63 Atl. 285, 287 (5 L. R. A. [N. S.] 611, 6 Ann. Cas. 1027). It is now as unlawful for him to beat or falsely imprison his wife as for another to do so, and he is amenable to the criminal law for such an offense. If another, prior to the recent statutes, committed these offenses against her, they were liable in an action for the injuries inflicted upon her by such torts, but the action had to be brought in the name of her husband and herself jointly; the real purpose of the action being to reduce the chose into the possession of the husband. The wife was joined, because, if her husband should die pending the suit, the damages would survive to her. 1 Blackstone, Com. 443; 1 Chitty on Pleading, 73. The common law regarded husband and wife as but one person, and the husband was that person. Being but one person, they could not contract with or sue one another. This resulted logically from the legal Identity of husband and wife. If this were the present status of the parties, the plaintiff could have no action for the recovery of damages for the torts alleged.

Public Acts 1877, c. 114, entitled an act in alteration of the act concerning domestic relations, but commonly called the Married Woman's Act, established a new legal status for persons thereafter married. It took effect April 20, 1877, and is embodied in the present revision of the general statutes. The purpose and effect of the act were in question in Mathewson v. Mathewson, supra. In the opinion, written by Judge Hammersley, after a review of the previously existing law relating to the status of married persons, it is held that "in enacting this law the state adopted a fundamental change of public policy"; that by it "the unity in the husband of his own and his wife's legal identity and capacity to own property was removed, and a new foundation, namely, equality of husband and wife in legal identity and capacity of owning property, was laid"; and that since the act took effect "husband and wife alike retain the capacity of owning, acquiring, and disposing of property, which belongs to unmarried persons." In that action a wife had sued her husband for breach of contract. The act provides that the wife shall have power to make contracts with third persons, and it was claimed that, as it in terms gave husband and wife no power to contract with each other, such power is prohibited; but it was held that, as the act "is in the nature of fundamental legislation, it involves all the results necessarily flowing from the principle established;" that the consequences resulting from the new status established by the act were not to be prohibited by Inference, unless such inference is necessary; and that the right of husband and wife to sue each other for breach of contract is one of the consequences of the new status established by the act.

In Marri v. Stamford Street R. R. Co., 84 Conn. 9, 23, 24, 78 Atl. 582, 33 L. R. A. (N. S.) 1042, Ann. Cas. 1912B, 1120, we held that, as the result of the legal status created by the act of 1877, the wife may now, by an action in her own name, recover for physical injuries tortiously inflicted upon her as fully and to the same extent as a husband may when he is the person injured, and that the wife's right of recovery for her injuries is exclusive. In that case a husband had been allowed to recover, among other things, for the loss of his wife's services caused by her injuries, and so much of the judgment as allowed him damages for the loss from such injuries was set aside.

By these two cases it is established that a wife, married since April 20, 1877, may contract with her husband or other person and may in her own name sue her husband or such other person for breach of such contract; also that she has a cause of action upon which she may recover in a suit brought in her own name for personal injuries wrongfully...