Tuohey v. Martinjak

• Decision Date: 05 March 1935
• Citation: 119 Conn. 500,177 A. 721
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: TUOHEY v. MARTINJAK et al.

177 A. 721

119 Conn. 500

TUOHEY v. MARTINJAK et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

March 5, 1935

Appeal from Superior Court, Hartford County; Patrick B O'Sullivan, Judge.

Action by Susan Tuohey to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been caused by the heedless and reckless disregard of the rights of the plaintiff by the defendants William J. Martinjak and another, wherein a demurrer to the second defense was overruled, and judgment was rendered for the defendants by way of nonsuit for failure to plead further, from which the plaintiff appealed.

No error.

Argued before MALTBIE, C.J., and HAINES, BANKS, AVERY, and JENNINGS JJ.

John C. Blackall and Charles H. Blackall, both of Hartford, for appellant.

Olcott D. Smith and Joseph F. Berry, both of Hartford, for appellees.

MALTBIE, Chief Justice.

The plaintiff brought this action to recover damages for personal injuries suffered when the automobile in which she was riding as a guest, operated by one of the defendants and maintained by the other as a family car, ran into a telegraph pole at the side of the highway. The complaint alleged that the defendant driver, diverting her attention to some vases containing flowers which were in the car and tipping over or in danger of doing so, neglected the operation of the car with the result that it proceeded along the highway without guidance until it struck the pole, and that the defendant driver was guilty of a heedless and reckless disregard of the rights of others in thus diverting her attention and permitting the car to proceed without control or direction. The defendants filed an answer containing a special defense that the action was one for personal injuries sustained on October 9, 1932, and the writ was dated January 25, 1934, and returnable to the first Tuesday of February, 1934, which was more than one year after the alleged cause of action accrued. The plaintiff demurred to this defense, the trial court overruled the demurrer, and the plaintiff has appealed. Whether the action of the trial court was correct or not depends upon the meaning and effect of section 6015 of the General Statutes, which provides as follows: " No action to recover damages for injury to the person, or for an injury to personal property caused by negligence, shall be brought but within one year from the date of the injury or neglect complained of." The date when the writ was served, not its date or the return day, marks the time when the action was begun. Sanford v. Dick, 17 Conn. 213; but, as the writ must have been served after its date, and more than one year had elapsed between the accident and that date, the allegations of the second defense, reasonably construed, are sufficient to invoke the statute, if it is applicable.

" For many years prior to the adoption of the practice act, and reaching back as far as 1821, one provision of our statutes had limited the time for the commencement of actions of trespass on the case to six years next after the right of action should accrue, while another had provided that no action of trespass and no action upon the case for words should be brought but within three years. Rev. St. 1821, pp. 310, 311, §§ 4, 5; Gen. St. 1875, p. 494, tit. 19, c. 18, §§ 6, 7. The revisers in preparing the Revision of 1888 were apparently of the opinion that, since the practice act had abolished the distinctions between the forms of action theretofore recognized, it would be wise to dispense with the use in these statutes of the terms ‘ actions of trespass on the case,’ ‘ actions upon the case,’ and ‘ actions of trespass,’ and substitute therefor definitional language of equivalent purport." Miner v. McNamara, 82 Conn. 578, 580, 74 A. 933, 934. The opinion in that case goes on to point out that beginning in 1853 certain special limitations applicable only to actions against railroad companies, and until 1897 including only actions for loss of life, were made by the Legislature. In 1877 the provision in the law for a recovery against a railroad company of damages for the loss of life of any passenger or person crossing its tracks upon a public highway was absorbed in the general laws giving an action for death by wrongful act, with its limitation of one year within which to bring suit. Pub. Acts. 1877, c. 78; Budd v. Meriden Electric R. Co., 69 Conn. 272, 284, 37 A. 683. A provision limiting suits against railroad companies for damages for loss of life was, however, retained as a separate provision in the Revision of 1888 (Gen. St.), § 1383, making the period limited to eighteen months; and it is out of this provision that section 6015 of the present revision developed. In 1897 a substitute for the section of the 1888 Revision was enacted, and in the first section of this act (Pub. Acts 1897, c. 189) it was provided that no suit against any municipal corporation, railway, or street railway corporation " for damages on account of injury to any person not resulting in death, or for injury to the property of any person caused bynegligence," should be brought, unless " within one year from the time when such injury occurred" ; and in the second section the limitation of one year for a suit for loss of life was extended to include the same corporations. In the Revision of 1902 the language of this provision was condensed and was extended to apply to actions against " a municipal or other corporation," so that it read: " No action against a municipal or other corporation, to recover damages for injury to the person, or for causing the death of any person, or for an injury to personal property caused bynegligence, shall be brought but within one year from the date of such injury, or from the decease of such person, as the case may be." Revision (Gen. St.) 1902, § 1119; Fitzgerald v. Scovil Mfg. Co., 77 Conn. 528, 60 A. 132. In 1903 the section was further amended into its present form. Pub. Acts 1903, c. 149.

If regard be had to the exact form of section 6015, the setting off by commas of the words " or for an injury to personal property caused bynegligence" would make the qualifying phrase applicable to injury to personal property only and not to " injury to the person." In construing statutes, the insertion or omission of commas will often be overlooked if thereby the fair purpose and intent of the law would be effected. Paquin, Limited, v. Westervelt, 93 Conn. 513, 515, 106 A. 766; Kubis v. Town of Cornwall, 95 Conn. 720, 723, 112 A. 663; State v. Darazzo, 97 Conn. 728, 735, 118 A. 81. In this instance the use of the commas to set off the phrase referring to injuries to property cannot be regarded as adventitious, for this method of punctuation has characterized the statute in every form it has taken in the public acts or revisions beginning with the act of 1897, and, indeed, the original of that act and the act of 1903 as they were adopted by the Legislature have the same punctuation. Punctuation so uniformly followed through the various changes and re-enactments of the law cannot be disregarded in any effort to determine its intent. Commonwealth v. Kelley, 177 Mass. 221, 223, 58 N.E. 691; Tyrrell v. Mayor of City of New York, 159 N.Y. 239, 242, 53 N.E. 1111.

Looking at the history of the law, we find that it had its origin in a certain special limitation applicable to actions against railroads. The intent of the Legislature was without...