Haynes v. Nowlin
| Decision Date | 08 December 1891 |
| Docket Number | 15,400 |
| Citation | 29 N.E. 389,129 Ind. 581 |
| Parties | Haynes v. Nowlin |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Dearborn Circuit Court.
Judgment affirmed.
W. S Holman, W. S. Holman, Jr., H. D. McMullen and W. R. Johnston for appellant.
G. M Roberts, C. W. Stapp, J. K. Thompson, M. J. Givan and N. S. Givan, for appellee.
The question which the record presents arises upon the ruling of the trial court sustaining a demurrer to the appellant's complaint. The question which requires our consideration and judgment is this: Can a married woman maintain an action against one who wrongfully entices her husband from her and alienates his affections?
It was the boast of the common law that "there is no right without a remedy," and, in the main, this boast was not an idle one, but was made good by the vindication of legal rights in almost all instances where the right was appropriately presented for judicial consideration and determination. Some of the courts, however, sacrificed the principle outlined in the maxim to the demands of fancied consistency, and surrendered a clear and strong right to a barren technical rule, for they held that a wife could not maintain an action for the loss of the society, support and affections of her husband. The fiction that the baron and feme were one person so far swayed the judgments of some of the courts as to carry them from a sound fundamental principle, and cause them to declare a doctrine revolting to every right-thinking person's sense of justice, and contrary to the foundation principles of natural right. We say that some of the cases did this, for not all gave the doctrine we refer to support, but, on the contrary, denied it, by holding that the wife might have a right of action against the wrongdoer who took her husband from her. To these cases we shall presently refer. The principle outlined in the maxim quoted requires that, even where the common law as it now exists prevails, it should be held that a wife may have an action against the wrong-doer who deprives her of the society support and affections of her husband. If there is any such thing as legal truth and legal right, a wronged wife may have her action in such a case as this, for in all the long category of human rights there is no clearer right than that of the wife to her husband's support, society and affection. An invasion of that right is a flagrant wrong, and it would be a stinging and bitter reproach to the law if there were no remedy. The virtue of elasticity which has been so often ascribed to the common law, and generally very justly, is nowhere more clearly or beneficially manifested than it is in relation to the rights of married women. Long since the doctrine of feudal times, which gave so many, and such comprehensive rights, to the baron and so few, and such narrow ones, to the feme, has given way before the enlightened thought of better ages and less barbarous times. One who should now, either in England or America, attempt to secure an enforcement of the old rules which placed the wife in such abject subjection to the husband, and stripped her of so many rights which belong, in natural justice, to a rational human being, would find a stern denial. It is beyond controversy that without the aid of statutory enactments the harsh, unreasonable rules of the old common law have fallen before the spirit of enlightened reason and true progress.
The doctrine that the wife could not maintain an action against one who deprived her of her husband violates the old maxim that "Reason is the life of the law," for there can be no reason in a rule which gives the stronger a right of action for an injury and denies it to the weaker. If the strong may maintain an action, the greater the reason why the weak may do so. If the baron may recover from one who entices away the feme, surely the same reason that supports the rule giving the former a right of action must give a like right to the latter. The reason is the same, but the degree is not, for the reason intensifies in power when invoked by the injured wife. The decisions which denied the wronged wife a right of action broke the line of consistency and marred the symmetry of the law. We have spoken of the decisions under the common law, but we do not feel called upon to discuss them at length; that has been ably done by the courts which have given the subject consideration. Bennett v. Bennett, 116 N.Y. 584, 23 N.E. 17; Lynch v. Knight, 9 H. L. Cases, 577; Breiman v. Paasch, 7 Abb. N. C. 249; Baker v. Baker, 16 Abb. N. C. 293; Jaynes v. Jaynes, 39 Hun 40; Warner v. Miller, 17 Abb. N. C. 221; Churchill v. Lewis, 17 Abb. N. C. 226; Foot v. Card, 58 Conn. 1, 18 A. 1027.
The decisions to which we have referred, and the authorities they adduce, prove, beyond debate, that even at common law the right of action for a personal wrong was in the wife. We assume, therefore, that the right of action for a wrong suffered by the wife was in her, and not in the husband. Any other conclusion is, indeed, logically inconceivable.
As the right of action for a personal injury was always in the wife she is, of necessity, the real party in interest, and, upon reason and principle, she ought always to have been held to be the party entitled to prosecute the action for the invasion of that right. That it was not so held was owing to the power of the legal fiction that she and her husband were one, for from this fiction came the stiff, unreasonable rule, that in all actions she must join her husband. Equity, however, never gave full recognition to this technical doctrine. Our statute, years ago, gave the wife a right to sue alone, and thus--adopting the chancery doctrine and abrogating that of the common law--broke down the only position upon which it could, with the slightest plausibility, be asserted that she could not sue one who wrongfully took her husband from her, since upon the ground that she could not sue alone was rested the doctrine denying her a right...
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