Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company v. Jeffries

• Decision Date: 29 May 1911
• Citation: 99 Miss. 534,55 So. 354
• Parties: YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD COMPANY v. MRS. MARY JEFFRIES, ADMINISTRATRIX
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

55 So. 354

99 Miss. 534

YAZOO & MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD COMPANY v. MRS. MARY JEFFRIES, ADMINISTRATRIX

Supreme Court of Mississippi

May 29, 1911

March 1911

APPEAL from the chancery court of Desoto county, HON. J. T. BLOUNT Chancellor.

Proceeding by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company to revoke letters of administration of Mrs. Mary Jeffries on the estate of R. W. Jeffries, deceased. From a decree in favor of the administratrix, the railroad appeals.

The facts are sufficiently stated in the opinion of the court.

Affirmed.

Mayes &amp Longstreet, for appellant.

Section 2091 of the Code of 1906, which is a practical rescript of section 1916 of the Code of 1892, provides that executors administrators and temporary administrators may commence and prosecute any general action whatever, in law and at equity, which the testator, or intestate may have commenced and prosecuted. But this means, of course, where there is an administrator by appointment under the law in this state, or where the temporary trustee was appointed to preserve an estate of which some right of action was a part.

Section 2019 of the Code provides: "If necessary an administrator may be appointed to institute and conduct suit, whose power shall cease when the litigation is entirely closed, and who shall only account for the proceeds of the suit."

The sections above quoted constitute practically all the statutes bearing on the subject of consideration, and we have referred to them in close sequence, in order that we may understand clearly the proposition we now submit and offer as a reason why Mrs. Jeffries should not have been appointed administratrix to proceed with the suit against the defendant, and why the estate of R. W. Jeffries, after his death, possessed no property, no effects and no rights in action in Mississippi.

We now desire respectfully to assert that when R. W. Jeffries, a citizen and resident of the state of Tennessee, died in that state intestate, that all his rights to recover for any alleged libel or slander uttered against him in his lifetime, died, abated and ended with him and his decease.

Under the law of the state of Tennessee, the place of residence and domicile of Jeffries at the time of his death, it is provided by express statute, that rights of action for libel and slander shall expire and die with the plaintiff in a pending suit founded thereon. The statute of Tennessee in question is section 4569 of Shannon's Code and is as follows:

"What actions survive.--No civil action commenced, whether founded on wrongs or contracts, except actions for wrongs affecting the character of the plaintiff, shall abate by the death of either party but may be revived."

The statute has been completed and applied in the following decisions of that state: 3d Sneed, 128; 4th Heis, 201; 7th Heis, 231; 7th Box, 299; 11 Lea, 10-11.

The court will, therefore, perceive that if Jeffries possessed any right at all, it was a personal right vested in him and which was in him in the state of Tennessee. The suit at law which he had instituted in the circuit court of Desoto county was but the remedy, the channel through which he was attempting to effectuate his alleged right of action.

Of course, there is an essential difference between a remedy and a right, and we need not trespass on the time and attention of the court to discuss this proposition. The right was attached to, existed in and always accompanied the person of the possessor of the right. Therefore, when Jeffries died in the state of Tennessee, while a citizen of, and a resident in that state, the right died with him by the express statutory provisions of the law of the state of his domicile, at the time of his death.

So when any person after his death should apply for the grant letters of administratior thereof, alleging in the petition, as appears on the face of the record, the allegation and admission that Jeffries had no property or effects in the state of Mississippi subject to administration, and no right of any sort which could be considered a "property right," except the pending suit for damages for libel, then it appears that no letters of administration should have been granted, because no right in Jeffries or in his estate survived him, or could be represented by an administrator; therefore, the administrator represented nothing at the date of the filing of her application for appointment.

Robert L. Dabney, for appellee.

The brief filed by counsel for the appellant contains the most curious, but ingenious argument that it has ever been the...