Matloff v. City of Chelsea

• Decision Date: 28 January 1941
• Citation: 31 N.E.2d 518,308 Mass. 134
• Parties: MATLOFF v. CITY OF CHELSEA.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

308 Mass. 134

31 N.E.2d 518

MATLOFF

v.CITY OF CHELSEA.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Jan. 28, 1941.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Suffolk County; D. T. O'Connell, Judge.

Action by Rose Matloff against the City of Chelsea, for injuries sustained as a result of a defect in a way. On plaintiff's exceptions relating to damages.

Exceptions overruled.

Argued before FIELD, C. J., and DONAHUE, LUMMUS, QUA, DOLAN, COX, and RONAN, JJ.

J. E. Hanningan and E. M. McMahon, both of Boston, for plaintiff.

M. Wise, City Solicitor, of Chelsea, for defendant.

LUMMUS, Justice.

This is an action for personal injury resulting from a defect in a way. G.L. (Ter.Ed.) c. 84, § 15. The plaintiff is a married woman, who was accustomed before her injury to spend all her time in caring for her household and family. For fourteen months her injury prevented her from doing so. There was evidence that an impairment of her capacity for work will continue for an uncertain period. The case is here on the plaintiff's exceptions relating to damages.

Though the plaintiff was a married woman, her time was her own, and she had a right to employ it to earn money which she had a right to keep for herself. Whether she actually did so employ her time or not, she was entitled to damages for impairment of her earning capacity. G.L. (Ter.Ed.) c. 209, § 4. Jordan v. Middlesex Railroad, 138 Mass. 425;Harmon v. Old Colony Railroad, 165 Mass. 100, 42 N.E. 505,30 L.R.A. 658, 52 Am.St.Rep. 499;Id., 168 Mass. 377, 47 N.E. 100;Millmore v. Boston Elevated Railway, 198 Mass. 370, 84 N.E. 468;Koch v. Lunch, 247 Mass. 459, 462, 141 N.E. 677;Ackerly v. Boston Elevated Railway, 275 Mass. 94, 175 N.E. 99;Doherty v. Ruiz, 302 Mass. 145, 146, 18 N.E.2d 542. The judge, sitting without jury found in favor of the plaintiff, and said that in awarding her $2,250 as damages he ‘included damage covering reduced earning capacity.’

The parties have argued these exceptions as though they raised the question whether the plaintiff was entitled to have considered, in assessing the damages, her inability, due to the injury, to perform without compensation her duties as housewife and mother. But the exceptions do not present that question.

The plaintiff excepted to the exclusion of questions to the plaintiff, asking her to state the fair value of her work as housewife and mother, to which her answer was taken, ‘Twenty dollars a week.’ A party may testify to the value of his services when they have a market value. The questions which were excluded asked the value of all that the plaintiff did as wife and mother in her own house. Doubtless she did more than she would have done had she been hired to work in another family on a time basis, and more than she would have been paid for under such a hiring. The questions went beyond the market value of marketable services, and in effect invited the plaintiff to assess her own damages for incapacity not shown to be measurable by any standard of market value. Whipple v. Rich, 180 Mass. 477, 479, 480, 63 N.E. 5;Doherty v. Ruiz, 302 Mass. 145, 147, 18 N.E.2d 542. The questions were properly excluded.

The plaintiff excepted also to the refusal of a requested ruling ‘that the plaintiff is entitled to recover for her loss of time from her duties as housewife, and mother...