Mageau v. Great Northern Railway Company
| Decision Date | 28 February 1908 |
| Docket Number | 15,357 - (148) |
| Citation | 115 N.W. 651,103 Minn. 290 |
| Parties | FRED H. MAGEAU v. GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
April 10, 1908
Action in the district court for Polk county to recover $5,150 damages for personal injuries.
The complaint in this action alleged that plaintiff's wife while a passenger on the defendant's train, was seriously injured by its negligence; that thereby he was compelled to expend large sums of money for drugs, medicines, and medical attendance, and was deprived of the services of his wife and of her society. The answer put defendant's negligence and the damages in issue. In a supplemental complaint plaintiff set forth that because of the said injuries his wife had died, and that he suffered further damages of the same nature as those stated in the original complaint. [At the trial defendant objected to the testimony of the physician who attended the wife as incompetent, immaterial and irrelevant under section 4660 of the statute.] The jury returned a verdict for $1,000. From an order denying its alternative motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or for a new trial, Watts, J., defendant appealed. Affirmed.
Rights of Action of Husband and Wife.
Where damages to a wife, resulting from defendant's actionable fault, have in no part been caused by the wife's own wrong, two distinct causes of action may accrue -- one to her, for the direct injuries to her person and the like; the other to her husband, for the consequential injuries to him consisting of loss of her services and society, and of the expense to which he may have been put, and the like.
Recovery by Administrator not a Bar to Husband's Action.
That such injuries have resulted in the death of the wife, and that an action has been brought under the statute by the administrator for the statutory beneficiaries, and a verdict recovered therein, constitute no bar to the action by the husband to recover damages inflicted on him by defendant's wrong.
J. W. Mason, for appellant.
H. Steenerson and Charles Loring, for respondent.
JAGGARD, J. (after stating the facts as above).
1. The trial court refused to instruct a verdict or enter a judgment because plaintiff, as administrator of the estate of his deceased wife, just prior to the trial of this case, had recovered a verdict for $4,000 for wrongfully causing the death of his wife. This fact, although not pleaded, was admitted at the time of the trial. The case was tried on the theory that it constituted an issue in the case. It is elementary that, where damages to the wife resulting from defendant's actionable fault have in no part been caused by the wife's own wrong, two distinct causes of action may accrue, viz., one for injury to the wife, and the other for injury to the husband.
In most jurisdictions statutory changes of the common-law rules as to parties have allowed the wife to sue in her own name for her injuries, which are direct, and the husband to sue in his name for his injuries, which are consequential. By her, damages to her person and the like (see, for example, Michigan v. Coleman, 28 Mich. 440); by him, damages for the loss of her services and society, expense to which he has been put, and the like -- may be recovered .
It is also elementary that at common law, where death of a wife resulted from these injuries, her cause of action ceases with her life, and that any action by the administrator to recover damages consequent upon death by wrongful act exists by virtue of Lord Campbell's act or similar statutes. It is certain that the two causes of action are essentially distinct. The parties, pleadings, proof, and damages awardable are fundamentally different. The action by the husband -- the action per quod servitium amisit -- lies, although the wife may not have died. The death of the wife is necessarily a condition precedent to the action by the administrator. The husband recovers only damages peculiar to the relationship, and that is for deprivation of her services, society, expense, and the like. The administrator recovers damages based upon the reasonable expectation of pecuniary benefit of the persons named by the statute, often not the husband, as the beneficiaries of the action. It is entirely clear that there can be no recovery by the husband in his own right for damages subsequent to the death of the wife.
The first case on the general subject regarded as leading is Baker v. Bolton, 1 Camp. 493. This was "an action against the defendants as proprietors of a stagecoach, on the top of which plaintiff and his late wife were traveling * * * when it was overturned." In consequence the wife died. In the action by the husband, Lord Ellenborough said:
The damages recoverable in the statutory action for death by wrongful act, and certainly in this state, are those which are due to death. The leading specific case on the immediate question is Hyatt v. Adams, 16 Mich. 180. That, like the present, was an action by the husband in his own name to recover damages for negligently causing the death of a wife. There Christiancy, J., discusses the whole matter at great length, including the authorities upon the question of the survival of the action. Inter alia, he said:
To the same effect see Philippi v. Wolff, 14 Abb. Pr. (N.S.) 196, 199; Lynch v. Davis, 12 How. Pr. 325; Ford v. Monroe, 20 Wend. 210; Mowry v. Chaney, 43 Iowa 609; Ohio v. Tindall, 13 Ind. 366, 74 Am. Dec. 259. And see McCubbin v. Hastings, 27 La. An. 713, 715.
Defendant has called our attention to the only authorities...
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