Lytle v. Southern Ry.-Carolina Division

• Decision Date: 17 May 1933
• Docket Number: 13640.
• Citation: 171 S.E. 42,171 S.C. 221
• Parties: LYTLE v. SOUTHERN RY.--CAROLINA DIVISION.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

171 S.E. 42

171 S.C. 221

LYTLE v. SOUTHERN RY.--CAROLINA DIVISION.

No. 13640.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

May 17, 1933

Appeal from Common Pleas Circuit Court of York County; C.J. Ramage Judge.

Action by Will Lytle, as administrator of the estate of Alf. Lytle deceased, against the Southern Railway--Carolina Division. From an adverse judgment, defendant appeals.

Affirmed.

McDonald Macaulay & McDonald, of Winnsboro, and Frank G. Tompkins, of Columbia, for appellant.

Gaston Hamilton & Gaston, of Chester Wilson & Wilson, of Rock Hill, and Thos F. McDow, of York, for respondent.

BLEASE Chief Justice.

In a former appeal to this court in this cause (Lytle v. Southern Ry.--Carolina Division, 152 S.C. 161, 149 S.E. 692), we affirmed the order of the circuit court overruling a demurrer of the defendant to the complaint. We held, quoting the syllabus, as follows: "Action may be maintained by legal representative for wrongful death of deceased employee in North Carolina under Federal Employers' Liability Act (45 USCA §§ 51-59) for benefit of employee's mother, where there is no father or children and where woman married to deceased has deserted him without cause and eloped with adulterer."

In the judgment of this court, however, we said: "Let the defendant be allowed to make a motion, if so advised, to make the widow a party. ***"

The defendant did not take advantage of the opportunity to have the widow, Sallie Lytle, brought into the suit.

On the trial of the case, the presiding judge, Honorable C.J. Ramage, followed our decision on the demurrer, and refused the defendant's motion for the direction of a verdict in its favor, and submitted the cause of action to the jury. The result of the trial was a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for the sum of $2,200, on which verdict there was a proper entry of judgment.

From the adverse judgment, the defendant has appealed on several exceptions. All of these, with the exception of one, relate to the refusal to grant the defendant's motion for a directed verdict in its favor. The remaining exception complains of error on the part of the trial judge in giving certain instructions to the jury at the request of the plaintiff.

The same legal position contended for by the appellant in its exception as to the charge to the jury is the foundation, also, of all its exceptions, save one, relating to the refusal to direct a favorable verdict for the appellant. A disposition, therefore, of the exception complaining of the instructions given will dispose of the similar question raised in other exceptions.

The instructions complained of were these: "I charge you in this connection that where a wife, a married woman, elopes with an adulterer and willfully and without just cause abandons her husband and refuses to live with him, and is living in adultery with another, that the unfaithful wife has no rights as a widow, and is not entitled to benefit from the wrongful death of her deceased husband, that the mother in the absence of children is the proper person for whose benefit the action should be brought."

At the outset we are met with the position of the respondent that the legal principles announced by the trial judge were, and are, "the law of the case," and for that reason we are bound, as was the trial court, by the former decision. With this view we are in accord, but we deem it proper to say something more in support of the holding of the court in the former appeal.

The exceptions of the appellant reiterate the contention of the former appeal that "no divorce having been granted or shown, Sallie Lytle was the legal surviving wife and widow of plaintiff's intestate, under the express provisions of the Federal Employers' Liability Act of Congress (45 USCA §§ 51-59), and no action could be brought or maintained for his mother or any other beneficiary, there being no surviving children."

It is argued in this connection that "no unfaithful conduct on the part of such childless widow, as alleged in the complaint, will forfeit her beneficial right of action under said Federal Act or vest any right of action in favor of the intestate's mother."

Recognizing our duty to seek an interpretation of the terms employed in the federal statutes in the decisions of the federal Supreme Court, if decision can be found in point, we have carefully examined the authorities submitted in support of appellant's position, together with other decisions of that court which, as we think, have some bearing in this consideration.

In the case of Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Wells-Dickey Trust Co., 275 U.S. 161, 48 S.Ct. 73, 72 L.Ed. 216, 59 A. L. R. 758, in construing section 1 of the Federal Employers' Liability Act (45 USCA § 51), it was said that: "The cause of action as there expressed, accrues to the widow and children, if either survives. It accrues to the parents if neither widow nor child survives." (Italics ours.) But this decision affords no light on the meaning of the term "widow" as used in the statute; and other federal Supreme Court decisions are only indirectly in point.

There is, however, a fundamental principle of statutory construction that "it is the duty of the court to ascertain the meaning of the legislature from the words used and the subject-matter to which the statute relates, and to restrain its operation within narrower limits than its words import if the court is satisfied that the literal meaning of its language would extend to cases which the legislature never intended to include in it." (Italics ours.) Petri v. Commercial Nat. Bank, 142 U.S. 644, 12 S.Ct. 325, 326, 35 L.Ed. 1144; The Lessee of Brewer v. Blougher, 14 Pet. 178, 10 L.Ed. 408. Or, as expressed in slightly different language, in Reiche v. Smythe, 13 Wall. 162, 164, 20 L.Ed. 566, it is said: "If it be true that it is the duty of the court to ascertain the meaning of the legislature from the words used in the statute and the subject-matter to which it relates, there is an equal duty to restrict the meaning of general words, whenever it is found necessary to do so, in order to carry out the legislative intention." (Italics added.) We find, also, the instructive comment of Chief Justice Taney, in Gayler et al. v. Wilder, 10 How. 477, 496, 13 L.Ed. 504: " It is not by detached words and phrases that a statute ought to be expounded. The whole act must be taken together, and a fair interpretation given to it, neither extending nor restricting it beyond the legitimate import of its language, and its obvious policy and object." (Italics ours.)

Consistently with the foregoing statements, the cases of New Orleans & N.E.

R. Co v. Harris, 247 U.S. 367, 38 S.Ct. 535, 536, 62 L.Ed. 1167, and Southern R. Co. v. Miller (C. C. A. 4th Circuit) 267 F. 376, 381, certiorari denied 254 U.S. 646, 41 S.Ct. 15, 65 L.Ed. 456, while not conclusively in point, afford the clear implication that the term "widow," as used in the Federal Employers' Liability Act, should be given a restricted rather than a literal meaning, so as to carry into effect the obvious remedial object of the statute to...