Lindh v. Great Northern Railway Company
| Decision Date | 30 November 1906 |
| Docket Number | 14,902 - (28) |
| Citation | 109 N.W. 823,99 Minn. 408 |
| Parties | O.N. LINDH v. GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Appeal by defendant from an order of the district court for Polk county, Watts, J., overruling a demurrer to the complaint. Affirmed.
Injuries to Dead Body.
An action ex delicto to recover damages for injured feelings lies at the suit of the husband against a common carrier for soiling and ruining the casket containing the body of his dead wife, and for mutilating and disfiguring the corpse by negligently and wilfully exposing it to rain. Larson v Chase, 47 Minn. 307, followed and approved.
M. L Countryman and A. C. Wilkinson, for appellant.
W. E. Rowe and C. O. Longley, for respondent.
The following facts are alleged in the complaint in this action.
The defendant and appellant, as a common carrier, undertook to transport a casket containing the body of the dead wife of plaintiff and respondent. In taking the casket through a named station, it became necessary to transfer the same to another of its trains. In so doing defendant carelessly and negligently left the same out of doors upon a railroad truck, and exposed it to rain, and wilfully ignored the request of the plaintiff to place the truck under cover, so that the rain might not get into the casket and injure and destroy the same as well as mutilate the corpse. Thereby the casket was soiled and ruined, and the corpse mutilated and greatly disfigured. Plaintiff suffered great mental anguish to his damage in the sum of $1,000. From an order overruling a demurrer by the defendant, this appeal was taken.
This case is concluded by Larson v. Chase, 47 Minn. 307, 50 N.W. 238, 14 L.R.A. 85, 28 Am. St. 370. It was there held: The right to the possession of a dead body for the purposes of preservation and burial belongs, in the absence of any testamentary disposition, to the surviving husband or wife, or next of kin. This right is one which the law recognizes and will protect, and for any infraction of it, such as an unlawful mutilation of the remains, an action for damages will lie. In such an action a recovery may be had for injury to the feelings and mental suffering resulting directly and proximately from the wrongful act, although no actual pecuniary damage is alleged or proved. That case was followed and approved, for example, in Foley v. Phelps, 1 A.D. 551, 37 N.Y.S. 471.
In Koerber v. Patek, 123 Wis. 453, 102 N.W. 40, 43, 68 L.R.A. 956, Mr. Justice Dodge says of Larson v. Chase and Foley v. Phelps, after citing them and other cases: "The first two -- and especially the first -- of these cases may be considered leading as they have been cited as the basis for most of the later ones upon this immediate subject, and in many others approaching it." Later in the opinion he says: "In Larson v. Chase, * * * the remarks of Mitchell, J., on this subject [sentimental damages] are so philosophical that we cannot forbear quoting them." Scores of the cases in which Larson v. Chase has been followed and approved will be found collected in volume 2 of L.R.A. Cases as Authorities at pages 776 and 777. Modern textwriters with no known exception recognize it as a leading authority...
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