Patenaude v. Patenaude

• Decision Date: 29 November 1935
• Docket Number: 30712.
• Citation: 263 N.W. 546,195 Minn. 523
• Parties: PATENAUDE v. PATENAUDE.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

263 N.W. 546

195 Minn. 523

PATENAUDE v. PATENAUDE.

No. 30712.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

November 29, 1935

Appeal from District Court, Polk County; James E. Montague, Judge.

Action by Grace Meyers Patenaude against Joseph A. Patenaude. From a judgment for the defendant on the pleadings, plaintiff appeals.

Affirmed.

Syllabus by the Court .

1. A married woman, under our statutes, cannot maintain an action against her husband for damages claimed to have been caused to her by the negligence of her husband prior to their marriage.

2. The fact that, prior to their marriage, plaintiff commenced an action against defendant for the same cause, which action she thereafter dismissed, does not create any estoppel or entitle her to any relief in the present suit.

Alexander Fosmark and W. E. Rowe, both of Crookston, for appellant.

Orr Stark, Kidder & Freeman, of St. Paul, for respondent.

I. M. OLSEN, Justice.

Plaintiff appeals from a judgment in favor of the defendant.

Plaintiff sued to recover damages for personal injuries suffered by her, claimed to have been caused by negligence on the part of the defendant in operating an automobile on a public highway. The accident causing the injury happened on August, 7, 1934. Plaintiff and defendant were married on January 17, 1935, and since then have been and now are husband and wife. This action was thereafter commenced. These facts appeared by the pleadings and record, and the court, on motion of defendant, granted judgment in defendant's favor on the pleadings.

1. The single question here presented for review is whether the wife can, during coverture, bring an action against her husband for a tort committed against her person prior to her marriage to him. It is well settled that she could not do so under the common law. Plaintiff bases her right to sue on our statute, section 8616, Mason's Minn. St. 1927, reading as follows: ‘ Women shall retain the same legal existence and legal personality after marriage as before, and every married woman shall receive the same protection of all her rights as a woman which her husband does as a man, including the right to appeal to the courts in her own name alone for protection or redress; but this section shall not confer upon the wife a right to vote or hold office, except as is otherwise provided by law.’

The exact question has not heretofore been directly decided by this court, and we are asked to construe the statute as applied to the particular facts in this case. It is well settled by our prior decisions that a wife cannot maintain an action against her husband, nor a husband against his wife, for a tort committed by one against the person of the other during coverture. Such a suit cannot be maintained even after the parties have been divorced. Strom v. Strom, 98 Minn. 427, 107 N.W. 1047,6 L.R.A.(N.S.) 191, 116 Am.St.Rep. 387; Drake v. Drake, 145 Minn. 388, 177 N.W. 624, 9 A.L.R. 1064; Woltman v. Woltman, 153 Minn. 217, 189 N.W. 1022; State v. Arnold, 182 Minn. 313, 235 N.W. 373. That being the law in this state, can the wife, during coverture, maintain a suit against her husband for a tort committed by him against her person prior to their marriage? We answer the question in the negative. In Thompson v. Thompson, 218 U.S. 611, 31 S.Ct. 111, 112, 54 L.Ed. 1180,30 L.R.A.(N.S.) 1153,21 Ann.Cas. 921, the wife sued her husband for damages for assaults committed by him upon her during coverture. The precise question before us here was not involved. But some of the reasonings of the court in holding the wife could not maintain the suit are pertinent. The court points out that to permit such suits would open the doors of the courts to accusations of all sorts of one spouse against the other and bring into public notice complaints for assault, slander, and libel, and other torts by one against the other. The opinion further states: ‘ It must be presumed that the legislators who enacted this statute were familiar with the long-established policy of the common law, and were not unmindful of the radical changes in the policy of centuries which such legislation as is here suggested would bring about. Conceding it to be within the power of the legislature to make this alteration in the law, if it saw fit to do so, nevertheless such radical and far-reaching changes should only be wrought by language so clear and plain as to be unmistakable evidence of the legislative intention. Had it been the legislative purpose not only to permit the wife to bring suits free from her husband's participation and control, but to bring actions against him also for injuries to person or property as though they were strangers, thus emphasizing and publishing differences which otherwise might not be serious, it would have been easy to have expressed that intent in terms of irresistible clearness.’

In Drake v. Drake, 145 Minn. 388, 177 N.W. 624, 625, 9 A.L.R. 1064, this court said: ‘ But the welfare of the home, the abiding place of domestic love and affection, the maintenance of which in all its sacredness, undisturbed by a public exposure of trivial family disagreements, is so essential to society, demands and requires that no...