Scofield v. Pennsylvania Co

• Decision Date: 22 December 1906
• Docket Number: 1-1906.
• Citation: 149 F. 601
• Parties: SCOFIELD v. PENNSYLVANIA CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania

149 F. 601

SCOFIELD v. PENNSYLVANIA CO.

No. 1-1906.

United States Circuit Court, W.D. Pennsylvania.

December 22, 1906

J. Ross Thompson, for the rule.

J. B Cessna and J. R. McQuigg, for plaintiffs.

ARCHBALD District Judge. ^[1]

The plaintiffs sue for the death of their son, who was killed by the negligence of the defendant company while a passenger upon one of its trains. He was about 30 years old, unmarried and living with his father and mother to whom he had given his services for a number of years, assuring his father that he would continue to do so until he (the father) had paid off the indebtedness under which he was laboring. His father is an architect engaged in a large and lucrative business at Cleveland, Ohio, and it was in that connection that the son undertook to assist him. His services were variously estimated at the trial by different witnesses as worth from $4,000 to $7,000 a year, the only amount paid him by his father on account of them being about $500 annually to meet his personal expenses. The jury gave a verdict for $17,000, and a new trial is asked for on the ground that it is excessive

When a child is under age, the parents have a right to his earnings and may therefore sue for the loss experienced by his death. But this right ends when he attains his majority, and, if death occurs before that, a recovery is limited in consequence to his probable earnings up to that time 'the chance of survivorship, his ability and willingness, after he should become of age, to support others,' being too vague, as it is declared, 'to enter into an estimate of damages merely compensatory. ' Caldwell v. Brown, 53 Pa. 453; Lehigh Iron Co. v. Rupp, 100 Pa. 35. It is, however, on the other hand, held, that after a child has become of age, if the family relation exists in fact, and the parents have a reasonable expectation of pecuniary advantage therefrom, an action may be maintained, based upon that expectancy. Pennsylvania Railroad v. Adams, 55 Pa. 499; North Penn. Railroad v. Kirk, 90 Pa. 15. It is difficult for me to reconcile these opposite and seemingly contradictory positions. It would be easier to do so, if the right to recover for the death of an adult child was confined to cases of actual dependence on the part of the parent, which the courts would naturally be reluctant to cut off, out of which the other doctrine may have grown. But this is not the law, which must be accepted as it is laid down; the act which is the basis of the action being local and the construction given to it by the state courts therefore being controlling. The conditions, however, which surround the subject suggests a limitation. The expectation of benefit to be derived by the parent from the child after it has become of age is not...