Case Name: Mrs. Libby Krasnoff SCHIFFMAN, Individually and as Natural Tutrix of Her Minor Children, Pamela, Naomi, Howard, and Joel Schiffman, v. SERVICE TRUCK LINES, INC., et al.
Court: Louisiana Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1974-12-30
Citations: 308 So. 2d 824
Docket Number: No. 6556
Parties: Mrs. Libby Krasnoff SCHIFFMAN, Individually and as Natural Tutrix of Her Minor Children, Pamela, Naomi, Howard, and Joel Schiffman, v. SERVICE TRUCK LINES, INC., et al.
Judges: Before REDMANN, LEMMON and STOULIG, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 308
Pages: 824–830

Head Matter:
Mrs. Libby Krasnoff SCHIFFMAN, Individually and as Natural Tutrix of Her Minor Children, Pamela, Naomi, Howard, and Joel Schiffman, v. SERVICE TRUCK LINES, INC., et al.
No. 6556.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit.
Dec. 30, 1974.
Concurring in Denial of Rehearing March 12, 1975.
Michael S. Guillory, Krasnoff and Guil-lory, Metairie, for plaintiff-appellant.
J. Walter Ward, Christovich & Kearney, New Orleans, for defendant-appellee.
Before REDMANN, LEMMON and STOULIG, JJ.

Opinion:
REDMANN, Judge.
May a wife, as part of a compromise between her tort-injured husband and the tortfeasor, effectively release her possible claim against the tortfeasor for her own losses from the husband's death if it results from the tort?
A widow appeals from the dismissal of her wrongful death action on exception of res judicata, based on a "receipt and release" which (if a compromise or transaction, C.C. art. 3071) has, "between the interested parties, a force equal to the authority of things adjudged," C.C. art. 3078.
We conclude that reasons similar to those which dictate a public policy against dealing in or renouncing rights in the succession of a living person, C.C. arts. 984, 1887, and 2454, dictate a public policy against dealing in or renouncing rights to an action for the wrongful death of a living person. Such a renunciation is therefore unenforceable because "contrary to morals" in the sense of C.C. art. 1892, and "contra bonos mores (contrary to moral conduct) or to public order" in the sense of C.C. art. 1895.
Facts
The petition alleges that a truck driver (made defendant with his employer and insurer) on June 18, 1968 negligently caused injury to the husband. The husband was rendered and remained comatose until death resulted February 1, 1973. The widow seeks damages for herself and four very young children. (The claim for the children is not a concern of this appeal.)
The "receipt and release" was executed September 13, 1972 by the wife as curatrix of her then interdicted husband, acknowledging receipt of $75,000 for her husband as his curatrix. But the instrument also recites that the wife "joins in her individual capacity the Release executed by her as Curatrix . . . hereby releasing, remitting and forever discharging [defendants] from all claims . . . which Appearer has had, now has or may in the future have, in the event [the husband] should die, to recover for his conscious pain and suffering through the date of his death, all expenses incurred therefrom (except as may be asserted by the United States of America for the medical care provided and to be provided by it), and for her own individual losses and claims which may arise from his death." (Emphasis ours.)
Intent of Release
The wife argues the emphasized language is not explicit enough to include a wrongful death action, and does not purport to end all possible litigation since the four infant children's claims are not released. But we find no other meaning to this language than that the wife's individual claim for damages for the death of her husband is remitted.
Validity of Remission
We hold the remission invalid as against the public policy prohibiting dealing in or renunciation of rights whose coming into existence requires the death of a living person.
The public policy is that of the Legislature, expressed in C.C. arts. 984, 1887, and 2454. These articles do not contain any express reference to the rights of survivors of a tort victim under C.C. art. 2315 (as amended). However, this omission is not suggestive of any intent to exclude wrongful death claims. Such claims were not allowed by law at the time of the enactment of the policy-expressing arts. 984, 1887 and 2454. Thus the framers of those articles had no occasion to consider whether to include or exclude the then nonexistent wrongful death action. Those articles' intent must be determined as of the time of their enactment; Geny, Method of Interpretation and Sources of Private Positive Law (La. Law Inst, trans.), § 99.
The wrongful death action (unlike the survival action for the victim's own damages) is not transmitted from the tort victim to his heirs, and in that sense is unlike succession. Thus, for example, wrongful death actions do not require a prohibition against the ancient practice of parents' obliging daughters and younger sons to renounce the parents' successions to preserve the successions intact for the oldest son (see Planiol, Civil Law Treatise [La.Law. Inst, trans.], Ill § 1969, n. 8).
Yet, the rule against acceptance of a living person's succession, La.C.C. art. 984, evidently proceeds from some other consideration. Buckland, A Textbook of Roman Law from Augustus to Justinian (3d ed.), 483, adds the reason that successions include debts, but recognizes as fundamental the reasoning of Justinian, Code 2.3.30, that the conditions of a sale of a succession are that the prospective decedent should die, and that the prospective heir should be called to the succession.
Pothier, Treatise on the Contract of Sale (trans. Cushing, 1839), § 527, p. 315, asserts that the sale of a succession is proscribed because "contrary to decency and good manners," that is, contra bonos mores.
Planiol, id. II, § 1013, notes this view of the immorality of "speculating] on the death of a living person who was ordinarily one of their relatives," though Planiol personally deems the reasoning "extremely feeble."
Our answer is far from free of doubt. We, however, conclude that contracting in future rights whose coming into existence requires a living person to die is no more acceptable in wrongful death cases than in succession cases in Louisiana. Dealing in such rights is contrary to morals, moral conduct and public order in the sense of C.C. arts. 1892 and 1895 and therefore ineffective.
The judgment is reversed and the exception overruled.
STOULIG, J., dissents with reasons.
. We adopt tlie view of intended remission as to the wife's claim, rather than compromise, because she received no payment as if in compromise. See Litvinoff, Obligations, § 376. The remission was onerous rather than gratuitous, however, because made in exchange for a payment to the husband in compromise of his claim. We recognize the implication that, rather than having the compromise's "authority of the thing adjudged," O.O. art. 307S, the release as a remission would defeat the original claim as an extinguishment, C.C. art. 2130. Extinguishment is declared to be an affirmative defense, to be pleaded in the answer, by C.O..P. art. 1005. However, O.O.P. art. 1005 also recites that compromise is an affirmative defense, despite O.O. art. 3078. Traditional Louisiana procedural concepts considered every exception a "means of defense," though limiting "defense, in its more restricted acceptation, . to such exceptions as go to the merits, showing that the action is neither just nor well founded," C.P. (1870) art. 330. C.P. art. 345 defined "[peremptory exceptions, founded on law [as] those which, without going into the merits of the cause, show that the plaintiff can not maintain his action, either because it is prescribed or because the cause of action has been destroyed or extinguished."
Today's C.O.P. art. 923 declares the "function of the peremptory exception is to have the plaintiff's action declared legally nonexistent, or barred by effect of law, and hence this exception tends to dismiss or defeat the action." C.C.P. art. 927 states that the objections raisable by the peremptory exception "are not limited to" the five it lists, and Comment (b) asserts that no pertinent change in the law was intended.
We conclude that remission of the obligation sued on is an objection raisable by the peremptory exception.
. Art. 984. The acceptance or rejection made by the heir, before the succession is opened or left, is absolutely null and can produce no effect; but this does not prevent the heir who has thus accepted, from accepting or rejecting validly the succession when his right is complete.
Art. 1887. Future things may be the object of an obligation. One can not, however, renounce the succession of an estate not yet devolved, nor can any stipulation be made with regard to such a succession, even with the consent of him whose succession is in question.
Art. 2454. The succession of a living person can not be sold.
. We have not found a discussion of the question in other states. We have found two cases in which a pre-death release was given effect. In F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Todd, 1951, 204 Okl. 532, 231 P.2d 681, one of several contentions was that the pre-death release was contrary to public policy. However, the court's only answer was that the release was not "contrary to or prohibited by" the wrongful death statute (there, a constitutional provision) ; id. at 685. In Petersen v. Kemper, 1945, 70 S.D. 427, 18 N.W.2d 294, 297, the pre-death release was only attacked as a "release of a cause of action which has not come into existence." There was no consideration of wrongful death releases prior to the death as a special category affected by special policy considerations.'