Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center, Inc. v. Connor, 93-02766

• Decision Date: 12 October 1994
• Docket Number: No. 93-02766,93-02766
• Citation: 643 So.2d 681
• Parties: 19 Fla. L. Weekly D2192 SOUTHWEST FLORIDA REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER, INC., a Florida corporation, Appellant, v. Barbara E. CONNOR, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 681

643 So.2d 681

19 Fla. L. Weekly D2192

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER, INC., a Florida

corporation, Appellant, v. Barbara E. CONNOR, Appellee.

No. 93-02766.

District Court of Appeal of Florida,

Second District.

Oct. 12, 1994.

James G. Decker and Margaret Racaniello of Decker and Smith, P.A., Fort Myers, for appellant.

Thomas E. Garlick and Jon D. Parrish of Harter, Secrest & Emery, Naples, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

In this appeal, we are asked to decide whether, in the absence of any written agreement, a wife may be liable for the medical bills incurred by her husband. Our decision depends on the current status of the common law doctrine of necessaries. ¹

Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center ("Southwest") provided medical services to Kenneth Connor in 1992. On March 15, 1993, Southwest sued both Kenneth Connor and his wife, Barbara, alleging that Mr. Connor had executed a written agreement to pay for medical services but was unable to pay the remaining balance of over $85,000. Mrs. Connor moved to dismiss the hospital's complaint against her because she had not executed an agreement to pay for the services rendered to her husband. The hospital argued that she should, nevertheless, be required to pay pursuant to the common law doctrine of necessaries as expanded by this court in Webb v. Hillsborough County Hospital Authority, 521 So.2d 199 (Fla. 2d DCA 1988). The trial court declined to apply the rule of reciprocal liability announced in Webb and noted that "while the Second District Court did observe that under certain circumstances 'a wife may be responsible for necessaries provided to her husband,' such observation was not essential to its holding that the husband's equal protection rights had not been violated."

In Webb, a husband appealed from a final judgment that held him liable for his wife's hospital bills under the doctrine of necessaries. The husband claimed that, because a wife had no liability for her husband's necessaries, to hold him responsible for his wife's medical bills violated his right to equal protection under the United States Constitution. This court agreed. After holding that "husbands and wives cannot constitutionally be treated differently in the context of this case," the issue that remained was how they were both to be treated. 521 So.2d at 202. Two possible changes in the law were considered: that both the husband and the wife be responsible for the necessaries provided to each, or that neither be responsible for the necessaries provided to the other. Rather than simply void the husband's long-standing obligation on newly applied constitutional grounds, we chose instead the rule of reciprocal liability and held that "as a general rule, both husband and wife are responsible for necessaries provided to each." Id. However, we limited this rule by also holding that, as a condition precedent to liability of the spouse who was not provided necessaries, a creditor must plead and prove that the spouse to whom necessaries were provided is unable to pay. In Webb, we also expressly recognized that by creating a new rule of reciprocal liability, the law was being changed. Therefore, we remanded for further proceedings and announced that the change in the law effected by our opinion applied prospectively.

Here, the complaint filed by Southwest stated a cause of action against Mrs. Connor in accordance with the requirements set forth in Webb. It was, therefore, error for the trial court to grant Mrs. Connor's motion to dismiss with prejudice. It was also error for the trial court to conclude that the rule created in Webb was dicta and that Webb did not apply. Webb has been the law in the Second District since 1988 and the trial courts in this district are bound to follow it. See Pardo v. State, 596 So.2d 665 (Fla.1992).

We note that there is language in the trial court's order that suggests that the trial court felt bound to apply the unmodified doctrine of necessaries as recognized by the supreme court in Shands Teaching Hospital and Clinics, Inc. v. Smith, 497 So.2d 644 (Fla.1986). The language of the order also suggests that the trial court further believed that applying Webb would mean disregarding Shands. We disagree. However, we understand that the various cases that address the doctrine of necessaries in Florida are difficult to reconcile and conflict among the districts. To provide a framework for analyzing the current status of the doctrine of necessaries, we summarize the development of the doctrine in Florida.

The supreme court recognized and applied the common law doctrine as early as 1895 in Phillips v. Sanchez, 35 Fla. 187, 17 So. 363 (1895), and continued to uphold it as recently as 1986 in Shands, 497 So.2d 644. However, the district courts of appeal have been divided in their approach to the doctrine both before and after Shands.

In Manatee Convalescent Center, Inc. v. McDonald, 392 So.2d 1356 (Fla. 2d DCA 1980), this court decided the time had come to change the common law doctrine by imposing reciprocal liability on the wife for the necessary expenses of her husband. In support of this holding, we said that "[c]hanging times demand reexamination of seemingly unchangeable legal dogma." Id. at 1358. We observed that the supreme court had rejected the common law unity concept of marriage in Gates v. Foley, 247 So.2d 40 (Fla.1971), and adopted the partner concept by granting a wife the right to claim loss of consortium against one who causes personal injury to her husband. Id. at 1357. We also observed that "the movement of the law has inexorably been toward equality of the sexes," noting that the legislature had overhauled Chapter 61 and granted husbands the same right to alimony already enjoyed by wives. Id. In further support of our decision to create a new rule, we quoted from Gates:

It may be argued that any change in this rule should come from the legislature.... Legislative action could, of course, be taken, but we abdicate our own function, in a field peculiarly non-statutory, when we refuse to consider an old and unsatisfactory court-made rule.

Id. (quoting Gates, 247 So.2d at 43).

The Third District adopted the Manatee rule in Parkway General Hospital, Inc. v. Stern, 400 So.2d 166 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981), and held a wife liable for her husband's medical bills. Since the basis of the reciprocal liability rule had been "thoroughly explicated" in the Manatee opinion, the court found that "[i]t is enough to say that the result is compelled by the state of modern society and of Florida constitutional, statutory, and decisional law all of which recognize the equality of spouses of either sex in their relationships to each other and to the law itself." Id. at 167.

The First District declined to follow Manatee and Parkway in Shands Teaching Hospital and Clinics, Inc. v. Smith, 480 So.2d 1366 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985), approved, 497 So.2d 644 (Fla.1986). Instead, that court recognized that the common law doctrine of necessaries had "never been explicitly altered by the constitution, Court or statutes, to require a wife to be subject to an action by a facility which has provided medical services to her husband without her contractual assumption," and applied the doctrine to affirm dismissal of a hospital's complaint against a wife. Id. at 1366. The court then observed that "[t]he lesson to be learned from Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So.2d 431, 434 (Fla.1973), is that in the absence of constitutional or statutory authority reflecting a change in established law, the district courts of appeal do not enjoy the prerogative of overruling controlling precedent of the Florida Supreme Court." Id. The court also expressed its view that the issue was one most appropriate for legislative concern. Id. Conflict with Manatee and Parkway was certified.

The supreme court accepted review and resolved the conflict in Shands, 497 So.2d 644. In that opinion, the court reviewed the roots of the common law doctrine of necessaries and agreed with the parties that "it is an anachronism to hold the husband responsible for the necessaries of the wife without also holding the wife responsible for the necessaries of the husband." Id. at 645. After summarizing the arguments made by the parties, the court observed there could be instances where it would be inequitable to hold either spouse liable for the medical services received by the other. Id. at 646. In a footnote, the court pointed out that the issue of whether it is a denial of equal protection to hold only the husband liable for the wife's necessaries "is not before us." Id. n. 1. The court declined to allow the hospital standing to raise the equal protection argument. The court then continued its observations regarding the arguments for and against a new rule and noted there could also be instances where it could be inequitable not to hold either spouse liable for the necessaries provided to the other. Finding merit in all the competing arguments, the court reached two conclusions that resulted from "this decisional quandary":

The first is that the issue is one with broad social implications, the resolution of which requires input from husbands, wives and the public in general. The second conclusion is that, of the three branches of government, the judiciary is the least capable of receiving public input and resolving broad policy questions based on a societal consensus.

Id. at 646.

The court then set forth as the controlling question, "whether this Court is the proper institution to resolve this issue," and considered it " 'wiser to leave it to the legislative branch.' " Id. (quoting Zorzos v. Rosen, 467 So.2d 305 (Fla.1985)). The First District's decision upholding the unmodified doctrine was upheld and the Manatee and Parkway decisions were expressly disapproved.

We followed Shands by reversing a trial court's ruling that both husband and wife were liable for the medical expenses of the husband in Wetjen v....