Hill v. Colonial Enterprises, Inc.

• Decision Date: 10 February 1969
• Docket Number: No. 1936,1936
• Citation: 219 So.2d 51
• Parties: Janice Marie HILL, as Administratrix of the Estate of Menda Marie Hill, Deceased, Appellant, v. COLONIAL ENTERPRISES, INC., a corporation, and William Alfred Sadler, Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 51

219 So.2d 51

Janice Marie HILL, as Administratrix of the Estate of Menda Marie Hill, Deceased, Appellant, v. COLONIAL ENTERPRISES, INC., a corporation, and William Alfred Sadler, Appellees.

No. 1936.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

Feb. 10, 1969.

Rehearing Denied March 10, 1969.

S. Victor Tipton and Charles J. Cullom, Orlando, for appellant.

John L. Sewell, of Gurney, Gurney & Handley, Orlando, for appellees.

REED, Judge.

Janice Marie Hill appeals from a summary final judgment entered by the Circuit Court for Osceola County, Florida, in an action at law brought by her as administratrix of the estate of her deceased mother, Menda Marie Hill. The action was brought against the appellees, Colonial Enterprises, Inc. and William Alfred Sadler, under the authority of Section 45.11, F.S.1963, F.S.A., and sought recovery from the defendants for alleged injuries to Menda Marie Hill as a result of a motor vehicle collision on or about 9 May 1960 involving an automobile driven by Menda Marie Hill and an automobile driven by the defendant William Alfred Sadler and owned by the defendant Colonial Enterprises, Inc.

This unfortunate accident which took the life of Menda Marie Hill gave rise to an earlier wrongful death action filed in the same court by Perdie Hill, her widower, against the same defendants. A final judgment consequent on a jury verdict, was entered in the wrongful death suit in favor of the defendants, appellees here. This judgment was entered prior to the filing of the administratrix's suit which gives rise to the present appeal.

The motion for summary judgment filed by the defendants incorporates a copy of the final judgment in the wrongful death action. The apparent basis on which the trial court granted the motion for summary judgment was a conclusion that the judgment in the wrongful death suit estopped Janice Marie Hill as administratrix of the estate of Menda Marie Hill from litigating the liability of the defendants for the accident which caused the death of Menda Marie Hill. The correctness of that conclusion is the point presented by this appeal.

The general rule is that all who are neither parties to a judgment nor privies to such parties are wholly free from the estoppel of the judgment. McGregor v. Provident Trust Co. of Philadelphia, 1935, 119 Fla. 718, 162 So. 323, and authorities cited therein.

Exceptions have been made to the general rule in connection with wrongful death suits. One of these exceptions holds that where the deceased person himself was held to have had no cause of action on account of the accident which brought an end to his life, his survivors have no cause of action under the wrongful death statute or the survival statute. Collins v. Hall, 1935, 117 Fla. 282, 283, 157 So. 646, 99 A.L.R. 1086. Another exception to the general rule is stated in the case of Epps v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., Fla.1949 40 So.2d 131. At page 132 of the opinion, the court said:

'The question on the appeal is whether the adverse final judgment entered in the prior suit brought under the wrongful death statute by the widow operated as an estoppel by judgment and barred recovery in the subsequent suit by the the personal representative of decedent, instituted under the survival of action statute, where both suits were based on the same act of negligence of the defendant and Where the benefits of favorable judgments in both suits would inure to the same parties, namely, the widow and the minor son of the decedent.' (Emphasis added.)

There the court held that the widow was estopped by the adverse judgment in the wrongful death suit from maintaining a suit in her capacity as administratrix...