Hurey v. Leavitt

• Decision Date: 18 July 1919
• Citation: 107 A. 457
• Parties: HUREY et al. v. LEAVITT.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

107 A. 457

HUREY et al.

v. LEAVITT.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

July 18, 1919.

Syllabus by the Court.

Appeal from District Court, Elizabeth County.

Suit by John Hurey and others against Nathan R. Leavitt. Judgment for plaintiffs, and defendant appeals. Reversed and rendered.

Argued June term, 1919, before SWAYZE and PARKER, JJ.

Schuyler M. Cady, of Elizabeth, for appellant.

Charles F. McKinney, of Newark, for appellees.

PARKER, J. The defendant is the guardian, under section 24 of the Insane Act of 1916 (P. L. p. 182, 196), of the estate of one George Pifon, who at the time of defendant's appointment, June 14, 1918, had been committed to the state hospital as insane. This suit is to recover the amount of plaintiffs' bill for conducting the funeral of Pifon's wife. She died October 21, 1918, we presume while he was confined at the state hospital. He himself gave the order for the funeral and plaintiffs carried it out. Defendant had nothing to do with it. The district court held, however, that he was liable in his capacity as guardian, over objection duly made.

This was clearly erroneous. The common-law rule has always been that a lunatic is liable to be sued for his lawful debts in his own name as if he were a sane person; the court protecting his interests by guardian ad litem. Janvier v. Coombs, 31 N. J. Law, at page 243; Van Horn v. Hann, 39 N. J. Law, 207, 212. Debts incurred by the lunatic for necessaries are within this rule. Id. That the decent burial of a lunatic's wife is to be classed with necessaries is not denied, and must perforce be conceded by plaintiffs, for if the lunatic himself could not lawfully order the funeral, and the defendant actually did not, they can recover from neither.

The same rule of law is recognized and applied in the later case of Wilkinson v. Markert, 65 N. J. Law, 518, 47 Atl. 488.

The case of Janvier v. Coombs related to an habitual drunkard, whose legal status, this court said, was assimilated to that of a lunatic. Van Horn v. Hann related to a party adjudged a lunatic under a general inquisition of lunacy pursuant to the earlier act (C. S. 2782 et seq.) If in such a case the guardian was not liable on the lunatic's contracts, a fortiori is a guardian exempt when appointed under section 24 of the act of 1916; for that statute rigidly limits his jurisdiction and duties. It is confined to cases where the "patient" has real or personal property, where no arrangements have been made for his maintenance (at the asylum), and no application for a general guardian has been made to the proper orphans' court. Th...