Title: NEGRON v. LLARENA
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: a-14-97
State: new-jersey
Issuer: new-jersey Supreme Court
Date: July 23, 1998

(This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Supreme Court. Please note that, in the interests of brevity, portions of any opinion may not have been summarized). HANDLER, J., writing for the Court. The issue in this appeal is whether the wrongful death statute of limitations may be tolled or deemed satisfied by the timely filing in a federal district court of a complaint that, because of the absence of subject matter jurisdiction, is later dismissed after the statutory period of limitations. William Negron suffered injuries after crashing his taxicab into a storefront in New Jersey. Following the accident, he received treatment for his injuries at Christ Hospital in Jersey City, New Jersey. On January 24, 1991, he died from his injuries. On October 23, 1991, Martha Negron, the administratrix ad prosequendum of the estate of William Negron and a resident of New York, filed a wrongful death action in the United State District Court for the Southern District of New York against Christ Hospital. The action was subsequently transferred by the court to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. Shortly thereafter, Negron amended her complaint to add Dr. Ramon Llarena and Dr. Ligija Rociunas as defendants. After the completion of discovery, the case was scheduled for trial. Before trial however, and outside of the two-year limitations period set forth in the New Jersey Wrongful Death Act ( Act ), the suit was voluntarily dismissed, without prejudice, on the ground that the U.S. District Court did not have subject matter jurisdiction. Subsequently, Negron filed a complaint in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Hudson County, alleging the same facts and causes of action that she had claimed in federal court. The defendant doctors moved for summary judgment, arguing that the action had not been filed within the two-year period of limitations for wrongful death actions. The trial court denied the doctors' motion and tolled the statute of limitations, thus allowing Negron's action to proceed. Llarena appealed. In an unreported decision, the Appellate Division reversed the trial court's denial of the defendants' motion for summary judgment, concluding that the two-year limitation in the wrongful death act barred Negron's claim in state court. The Supreme Court granted Negron's petition for certification. HELD: Negron has substantially complied with the two-year statute of limitations set forth in the New Jersey Wrongful Death Act and her complaint filed in state court is therefore not barred by that limitations period. 1. Substantive statutes of limitations, such as that set forth in the Act, restrict statutory causes of action that did not exist at common law and, as a condition precedent to bringing suit, bar not only the remedy, but also the right itself. (pp. 4-5) 2. Unlike procedural statutes of limitations, substantive statutes of limitation, such as the wrongful death statute of limitations, have been applied strictly by New Jersey courts. (pp. 4-5) 3. The interpretive approach to substantive statutes of limitations has undergone a significant change in recent times and has evolved to one that recognizes that their application depends on statutory interpretation focusing on legislative intent and purpose. (pp. 6-10) 4. There is nothing reflective in the objectives of the Act or its history that suggests the Legislature intended to foreclose the familiar doctrine of substantial compliance, which allows for the flexible application of a statute in appropriate circumstances. (pp. 10-11) 5. Courts invoke the doctrine of substantial compliance to avoid technical defeat of valid claims. However, in order to prove substantial compliance, a defaulting party must establish a lack of prejudice to the defending party, a general compliance with the purpose of the statute, and a reasonable explanation why there was not strict compliance with the statute, among other factors. (p. 11) 6. Negron's failure to file her wrongful death complaint in New Jersey court within the statute of limitations did not prejudice the doctors because the filing came immediately following dismissal in federal court and they were already prepared for the lawsuit. In addition, Negron clearly took a series of steps to comply with the statute and generally complied with the purpose of the statute. Furthermore, the federal complaint with the ensuing discovery process adequately notified the doctors of Negron's claim. (pp. 11-12) 7. Because of the federal law's lack of clarity on the subject of diversity jurisdiction in wrongful death suits, it was reasonable for Negron to have brought her original suit in federal court, and her failure to comply strictly with the wrongful death statute of limitations in her state suit has a reasonable explanation. (p. 14) Judgment of the Appellate Division is REVERSED. JUSTICE HANDLER also filed a separate concurring opinion to show that the conclusion that the legislative purpose and intent of the Wrongful Death Act will not be frustrated by this application of the statute of limitations is fortified by the history of wrongful death actions. CHIEF JUSTICE PORITZ and JUSTICES POLLOCK, O'HERN, GARIBALDI, STEIN and COLEMAN join in JUSTICE HANDLER's opinion. JUSTICE HANDLER also filed a separate concurring opinion. MARTHA NEGRON, Administratrix Ad Prosequendum of the Estate of WILLIAM NEGRON and MARTHA NEGRON, Personally, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. RAMON LLARENA, M.D., Defendant-Respondent, and LIGIJA ROCIUNAS, M.D., Defendant. Argued September 23, 1997 -- Decided July 23, 1998 On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division. David Taback, a member of the New York bar, argued the cause for appellant (Callan, Regenstreich, Koster &amp; Brady, attorneys; Barbara Brosnan Rivera, on the brief). Jared P. Kingsley argued the cause for respondent (Bumgardner, Hardin &amp; Ellis, attorneys). The opinion of the Court was delivered by HANDLER, J. In this case, the decedent died following medical treatment for injuries suffered in an automobile accident in New Jersey. His surviving wife, a New York resident, commenced a wrongful death action in New York federal district court. Jurisdiction was purportedly based on diversity of citizenship, the defendant being a New Jersey hospital. Shortly thereafter the case was transferred to New Jersey federal district court. Following the transfer of the action, the plaintiff amended the complaint, joining two additional defendants, the treating doctors who were staff physicians of the defendant hospital and also residents of New Jersey. Thereafter, the federal action was dismissed because of the lack of diversity jurisdiction. The plaintiff then filed this identical wrongful death action in State Superior Court. New Jersey's Wrongful Death Act requires that an action for wrongful death be brought within two years of the date of death. Because the wrongful death complaint in the New Jersey State court was filed more than two years after the date of decedent's death, the issue presented by this appeal is whether the wrongful death statute of limitations may be tolled or deemed satisfied by the timely filing in a federal district court of a complaint that, because of the absence of subject-matter jurisdiction, is later dismissed after the statutory period of limitations. The Appellate Division, in this case, determined that "'the two-year limitation in New Jersey's wrongful death act [N.J.S.A. 2A:31-3] is not a "statute of limitations in the ordinary or general sense," but is a condition of the right granted,'" and that "condition must be met before the party has the right to file a wrongful death action." The interpretation of the meaning and intended application of substantive statutes of limitations has undergone a significant change in recent times. In White, supra, 76 N.J. 368, the Court reexamined the question of whether a substantive statute of limitations could be subject to exceptions from its strict application. The statute of limitations involved in White was that contained in the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act, N.J.S.A. 52:4B-1 to -49, which provided compensation to innocent victims of violent crimes who submit an application to the Violent Crime Compensation Board (VCCB) "within 1 year after the date of the personal injury or death." White, supra, 76 N.J. at 371-72, 374. The plaintiff in White had been the victim of a brutal assault and rape. Id. at 370. After repeated diligent attempts to obtain assistance, she applied for relief under the Act; her application to the VCCB, however, was filed seven weeks after the limitations period had expired. Id. at 370-72. The Court held "that in the case of a statutorily created right, a 'substantive' limitation period may appropriately be tolled in a particular set of circumstances if the legislative purpose underlying the statutory scheme will thereby be effectuated." Id. at 379. The Court also emphasized the relevance of considerations of public policy and legislative intent in determining whether the substantive statute of limitations could be relaxed. The Court considered the critical question to be whether relaxation of the statute of limitations would comport with the legislative intent. Id. at 377. Accordingly, the Court found no policy underlying the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act that would prohibit tolling the statute of limitations for a victim's crime-induced incapacity; further, even though the period of limitations was created as part of the statutory right, there was no apparent legislative intent to cut off all claims after a specified time from the commission of the crime, regardless of the equities involved. Id. at 385-86. White's significant change in the interpretive approach to substantive statutes of limitation clearly is relevant to the wrongful death statute of limitations. In Marshall, supra, 37 N.J. 176, the Court was confronted with a conflict-of-laws question, namely, whether Pennsylvania's or New Jersey's wrongful death statute of limitations should be applied in a wrongful death action brought in New Jersey arising out of a Pennsylvania accident. Id. at 179. On accepted conflict-of-laws principles the Court determined to apply New Jersey's statute, finding that the Pennsylvania statute of limitations was a procedural and not a substantive statute. Id. at 186-88. Implicit in the Court's analysis in Marshall was that the New Jersey wrongful death statute of limitations, as a substantive statute of limitations, constituted a condition of the cause of action and consequently was not amenable to any interpretation that could alter its strict application. Id. at 182-83. That assumption, however, was implicitly abandoned in the recent case Gantes v. Kason Corp., 145 N.J. 478 (1996). There, a products-liability action was brought in New Jersey by the representative of a Georgia decedent who had been killed while at work in Georgia, allegedly because of a defective machine that had been manufactured in New Jersey. Id. at 482-83. In considering a choice-of-law issue similar to that posed in Marshall, the Court determined that the Georgia statute of repose applicable in products-liability actions was similar to a substantive statute of limitations. Id. at 495. The Court also acknowledged that as a substantive part of the statute defining the cause of action, the statute of repose would ordinarily be applied as a constituent part of the substantive law of the place of the accident. Ibid. Nevertheless, the Court ruled that the statute should be construed to ascertain its underlying legislative purpose and intent in order to determine whether, in light of Georgia's public policy, it should be applied as a condition of the cause of action to bar the New Jersey products-liability action. Ibid. Following that interpretive standard, which focused on legislative purpose and intent, the Court concluded that application of the Georgia statute of repose to the New Jersey action based on the Georgia accident would not fulfill any of its underlying legislative purposes and, therefore, the statute of repose ought not apply as a condition of the underlying action, but that New Jersey's wrongful death statute of limitations should apply. Id. at 497-98. Thus, this Court's approach to substantive statutes of limitations has evolved to one that recognizes that their application depends on statutory interpretation focusing on legislative intent and purpose. See Kaczmarek, supra, 77 N.J. at 339 (noting that in White, the Court eschewed its previous strict or "mechanistic" approach to substantive statutes of limitations "for a more flexible legislative-purpose test"). The Court in White explicitly adopted such an approach, following the reasoning of the United States Supreme Court in Burnett v. New York Central Railroad, 380 U.S. 424, 85 S. Ct. 1050, 13 L. Ed. 2d 941 (1965), and the Fourth Circuit in Scarborough v. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, 178 F.2d 253 (1949), cert. denied, 339 U.S. 919, 70 S. Ct. 621, 94 L. Ed. 1343 (1950). White, supra, 76 N.J. at 376-77. Those courts looked beyond the form of the limitations period, that is, whether it was "substantive" or "procedural," to determine whether tolling of the limitations period would effectuate the legislative purpose of the statute. Ibid. In Cornblatt, supra, we adopted that formulation of the substantial compliance framework. 153 N.J. at 239-40. Application of the doctrine of substantial compliance to Negron's filing of her wrongful death complaint results in a firm conclusion that she has substantially complied with the Wrongful Death Act's statute of limitations. Following the Bernstein factors in order, first, Negron's failure to file her wrongful death complaint in New Jersey court within the statute of limitations did not prejudice defendant because the filing came immediately following dismissal in federal court. Defendant could not have been prejudiced because he was already prepared for the lawsuit. Second, Negron clearly took "a series of steps" to comply with the statute of limitations in that she filed her federal complaint within the appropriate time frame and then filed her state complaint immediately after her federal complaint was dismissed. Third, in filing both of her complaints diligently, Negron generally complied with the purpose of the statute of limitations. Fourth, the federal complaint with the ensuing discovery process adequately notified defendant of Negron's claim. The final consideration for substantial compliance is whether Negron had a reasonable explanation for her failure to comply strictly with the statute of limitations. Answering that inquiry depends on an analysis of federal diversity jurisprudence in wrongful death actions. To recapitulate the procedural posture of this case at the time Negron filed her suit in federal court, Negron was a citizen of New York and defendants were citizens of New Jersey. Decedent, Negron's husband, was a citizen of New Jersey at the time of his death. Negron filed suit in federal district court claiming complete diversity. On November 28, 1994, the district court dismissed the claim, stating only that the matter was dismissed for "want of subject matter jurisdiction." Because the district court did not explain its ruling, we can only assume that the court found that the suit lacked in complete diversity because a wrongful death plaintiff takes the citizenship of the decedent. However, Negron had a colorable claim in believing that complete diversity did exist at the time of filing her complaint in federal court. Under 28 U.S.C.A. 1332(c)(2), for diversity purposes, "the legal representative of the estate of a decedent shall be deemed to be a citizen only of the same State as the decedent . . . ." Congress enacted that provision in 1988 in an attempt to resolve a circuit split in dealing with a decedent's estate for diversity purposes. See Pallazola v. Rucker, 797 F.2d 1116 (1st Cir. 1986) (reviewing the circuit split). In the context of wrongful death cases, applying 1332(c)(2) has not produced the resolution Congress intended. Three district courts have determined that 1332(c)(2) applies to a wrongful death action and thus that the representative bringing suit is deemed to be a citizen of the same state as the decedent. See James v. Three Notch Medical Ctr., 966 F. Supp. 1112 (M.D. Ala. 1997); Liu v. Westchester County Medical Ctr., 837 F. Supp. 82 (S.D.N.Y. 1993); Green v. Lake of Woods County, 815 F. Supp. 305 (D. Minn. 1993). Three other district courts have found the opposite: that a person bringing a wrongful death suit is not a "legal representative of the estate of a decedent" under 1332(c)(2) because the plaintiff is bringing suit on his or her own behalf and not on behalf of the estate; thus, 1332(c)(2) would not apply. See Winn v. Panola-Harrison Elec. Coop., Inc., 966 F. Supp. 481 (E.D. Tex. 1997); Marler v. Hiebert, 960 F. Supp. 253 (D. Kan. 1997); Tank v. Chronister, No. CIV.A. 95-1540-FGT, 1 997 WL 872684 (D. Kan. May 6, 1997) (reversing, on motion for reconsideration, its own opinion holding to the contrary in Tank v. Chronister, 951 F. Supp. 182 (D. Kan. 1997)). Because of the law's lack of clarity on this point, it was reasonable for Negron to have brought her original suit in federal court; therefore, Negron's failure to comply strictly with the wrongful death statute of limitations in her state suit has a reasonable explanation. Accordingly, Negron has satisfied all five of the requirements for a finding of substantial compliance. The application of the doctrine of substantial compliance obviates additional consideration of whether equitable tolling or the discovery rule should be invoked to toll the statute of limitations. We note, however, that both doctrines in appropriate circumstances, such as those presented by this case, can be relevant in determining whether the statute of limitations should be tolled. See, e.g., Galligan v. Westfield Centre Serv., Inc., 82 N.J. 188 (1980) (holding that the statute of limitations for a survivorship case would be equitably tolled by the timely filing of an action in federal court improperly based on diversity of citizenship jurisdiction); Mitzner v. West Ridgelawn Cemetery, Inc., 311 N.J. Super. 233 (App. Div. 1998) (applying Galligan). CHIEF JUSTICE PORITZ and JUSTICES POLLOCK, O'HERN, GARIBALDI, STEIN, and COLEMAN join in JUSTICE HANDLER's opinion. JUSTICE HANDLER has also filed a separate concurring opinion. MARTHA NEGRON, Administratrix Ad Prosequendum of the Estate of WILLIAM NEGRON and MARTHA NEGRON, Personally, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. RAMON LLARENA, M.D., Defendant-Respondent, and LIGIJA ROCIUNAS, M.D., Defendant. HANDLER, J., concurring The rule of construction applicable to substantive statutes of limitation is one that focuses on legislative intent and purpose. That construction serves to explain why, in the circumstances of this case, the wrongful death statute of limitations should not be strictly applied to foreclose a wrongful death claim that was not technically timely filed. I write separately here to show that the conclusion that the legislative purpose and intent will not be frustrated by this application of the statute of limitations is fortified by the history of wrongful death actions. That pronouncement of the law became known as the "felony-merger rule." The rule was repeated in another case decided seventy years later, Smith v. Sykes, 89 Eng. Rep. 160 (K.B. 1677): "[I]f A. beat the wife of B., so that she dies, B. can have no action of the case for that; because it is criminal, and of a higher nature." Ibid. The issue of recovery for wrongful death did not appear again in any reported case for well over a century. In 1808, Lord Ellenborough, in Baker v. Bolton, 170 Eng. Rep. 1033 (Nisi Prius), declared: "In a civil Court, the death of a human being could not be complained of as an injury." Ibid. Baker involved a husband suing stagecoach proprietors for his wife's injuries and ultimate death one month later as a result of traveling in the stagecoach. Ibid. Lord Ellenborough concluded that the plaintiff could recover only for injuries he suffered while his wife was still alive but suffering and not for injuries after her death. Ibid. Baker is the acknowledged source of the rule that the common law denies recovery for wrongful death. See, e.g., T.A. Smedley, Wrongful Death -- Bases of the Common Law Rules, 13 Vand. L. Rev. 605, 613 (1960); W.S. Holdsworth, The Origin of the Rule in Baker v. Bolton, 32 L.Q. Rev. 431 (1916). Lord Ellenborough, however, cited no authority and gave no reasoning for his famous pronouncement that no action for wrongful death existed. In the United States, recovery for the wrongful death of another went through a much different history. In fact, recovery for wrongful death seemed to have been accepted in colonial and early post-revolutionary times. The first trace of allowing for the recovery for wrongful death appears in 1682 in Pennsylvania colonial law. The basic law applicable for the colony stated that "the estates of capital offenders, as traitors, and murderers, shall go one-third to the next of kin to the sufferer." 24th &amp; 25th Laws Agreed Upon in England (1682), in Duke of York's Book of Laws 101 (1879), quoted in Wex S. Malone, The Genesis of Wrongful Death, 17 Stan. L. Rev. 1043, 1062 (1965). States generally disavowed the felony-merger rule and recognized actions for the wrongful death of another. See 1 Stuart M. Speiser et. al., Recovery for Wrongful Death and Injury 1:3 at 1-14 n.16 (3d ed. 1992) (noting that in a judicial proceeding that was both criminal and civil, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Court of Assistants consistently allowed for recovery for the death of another); Malone, supra, 17 Stan. L. Rev. at 1063, 1065 (pointing out that reported cases show "no serious doubt was entertained as to the propriety of resort to a civil suit" and that "both fine and compensation to the surviving family were imposed indiscriminately"). Moreover, even after Baker, American courts successively did not follow its pronouncement and allowed recovery for wrongful death. See, e.g., Plummer v. Webb, 19 F. Cas. 894 (D. Me. 1825) (rejecting felony-merger doctrine as having no place in American law and allowing a father to recover for the death of his son), dismissed on appeal for lack of admiralty juris., 19 F. Cas. 891 (C.C.D. Me. 1827); Ford v. Monroe, 20 Wend. 210 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1838) (affirming a verdict in favor of a father who had brought suit for the loss of services because his infant son had been run over and killed as the direct consequence of tortious act of the defendant). Thus, by mid-nineteenth century, the common law in America recognized an action for wrongful death. Malone, supra, 17 Stan. L. Rev. at 1067 ("Ellenborough's blunt announcement that no civil action can be grounded upon the death of a human being not only lacked historical support at the time but was consistently ignored in America."); Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law 473-74 (2d ed. 1985) ("There were clear signs in the early 19th century that American courts had never really accepted the [Baker] rule."); Francis B. Tiffany, Death by Wrongful Act 6 at 9 (2d ed. 1913) ("Lord Ellenborough's rule was not universally recognized in this country."). The United States Supreme Court itself criticized the historically-grounded justification for the rule in England, if there was any, as having "never existed in this country." Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U.S. 375, 384, 90 S. Ct. 1772, 1779, 26 L. Ed. 2d 339, 347 (1970). More than thirty years later, a unanimous panel of the King's Bench rejected an attempt to ensconce Bramwell's reasoning as law by concluding merely that the rule of Osborn v. Gillett must prevail. Clark v. London Gen. Omnibus Co., [1906] 2 K.B. 648 (1906). In 1917, the House of Lords recognized the Baker principle as well in Admiralty Comm'rs v. S.S. Amerika, [1917] App. Cas. 38. American states enacted wrongful death statutes patterned after Lord Campbell's Act, even though courts generally had recognized a common-law action for wrongful death. 1 Speiser, supra, 1:9 at 1-35. It is both ironic and significant that only after the passage of Lord Campbell's Act and its American counterparts did courts in this country actually announce as an accepted statement of the law that no action for wrongful death existed at common law. There was no mention at all of the Baker doctrine in the United States until 1848. In the last months of that year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided Carey v. Berkshire Railroad Co., 55 Mass. (1 Cush.) 475, and the companion case of Skinner v. Housatonic Railroad Corp., ibid. The court found that no cause of action existed for wrongful death. It simply declared that the rule of Baker v. Bolton "is the doctrine of the common law." Id. at 478. It accepted that doctrine with no acknowledgement of the previous Massachusetts and state cases allowing for recovery for wrongful death. Other jurisdictions quickly followed that lead. Kentucky, in Eden v. Lexington &amp; Frankfort Railroad Co., 53 Ky. 165 (1853), became the first state to cite Carey approvingly as the authoritative interpretation of the common law. New York overruled Ford v. Monroe, supra, in Green v. Hudson River Rail Road Co., 28 Barb. 9, 21-22 (Sup. Ct. 1859), aff'd, 2 Abb. App. Dec. 277 (1866), holding that the common law recognized no claim for wrongful death. Connecticut adopted Baker without mentioning its own 1794 decision of Cross v. Guthery, 1 Am. Dec. 61, in which it allowed recovery for a husband whose wife had died at the hands of the defendant-surgeon. Connecticut Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. New York &amp; New Haven R.R., 25 Conn. 265, 271-72 (1856). In 1867, Michigan also adopted the rule of Baker. Hyatt v. Adams, 16 Mich. 180.See footnote 1 Only Georgia and Hawaii did not adopt the Baker doctrine. See W.E. Shipley, Annotation, Modern Status of Rule Denying a Common-Law Recovery for Wrongful Death, 61 A.L.R.3d 906, 914-15 (1975) (citing Shields v. Yonge, 15 Ga. 349 (1854), and Kake v. Horton, 2 Haw. 209 (1860)). Nevertheless, despite its acceptance in American jurisprudence, the rule of Baker was routinely criticized in the very opinions in which it was adopted. See id. at 911-12; 1 Speiser, supra, 1:5 at 1-18 n.33 (listing such cases). Justice Holmes, in dissent, also criticized the rule's basis: Without going into the reasons for the notion that an action (other than on appeal) does not lie for causing the death of a human being, it is enough to say that they have disappeared. The policy that forbade such an action, if it was more profound than the absence of a remedy when a man's body was hanged and his goods confiscated for the felony, has been shown not to be the policy of present law by statutes of the United States, and of most, if not all, of the states. [Panama R.R. v. Rock, 266 U.S. 209, 216, 45 S. Ct. 58, 60, 69 L. Ed. 250, 253 (1924).] In 1970, the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, abandoned almost a century of precedent in concluding that the common law, in the maritime context, recognizes recovery for wrongful death. Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., supra. The Supreme Court reasoned that the rule of Baker had been "thrown into discard" even at the time of its adoption in the United States and that it was "difficult to discern an adequate reason" for its continuation in modern maritime jurisprudence. 398 U.S. at 381, 90 S. Ct. at 1777-78, 26 L. Ed. 2d at 346. In Gaudette v. Webb, 284 N.E.2d 222 (Mass. 1972), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was faced with the question of whether the statute of limitations for wrongful death could be tolled by the infant-tolling provision in the Massachusetts code. Id. at 225. The court reviewed its 1848 decision in Carey in light of the United States Supreme Court's then-recent decision in Moragne. Id. at 227-29. It was "convinced that the law in [Massachusetts] has also evolved to the point where it may now be held that the right to recovery for wrongful death is of common law origin, and we so hold." Id. at 229. The consequence of that conclusion was that the "wrongful death statutes [would] no longer be regarded as 'creating the right' to recovery for wrongful death," and the statutes would be viewed as "requiring that the action be commenced within the specified period of time, as a limitation upon the remedy and not upon the right." Ibid. The court thus allowed the infant-tolling statute to toll the wrongful death statute of limitations. Id. at 230.See footnote 2 A few other state courts have followed the leads of Moragne and Gaudette in concluding that their wrongful death actions have common law origins and thus that the wrongful death statute will be applied with common-law principles in mind. See Hanebuth v. Bell Helicopter Int'l, 694 P.2d 143, 146 (Alaska 1984) (applying the discovery rule to wrongful death actions); Haakanson v. Wakefield Seafoods, Inc., 600 P.2d 1087, 1091-92 (Alaska 1979) (stating the court is "in agreement with the spirit" of Moragne and Gaudette); Summerfield v. Superior Court, 698 P.2d 712, 718 (Ariz. 1985) (holding that the wrongful death "statute and precedent have combined to produce a cause of action with common law attributes"); O'Grady v. Brown, 654 S.W.2d 904, 909 (Mo. 1983) (holding that the wrongful death statute incorporates common law principles). But see Justus v. Atchison, 565 P.2d 122, 128 (Cal. 1977) (rejecting Moragne's logic because the California legislature had occupied the field of wrongful death actions leaving no room for common-law development); Ecker v. Town of West Hartford, 530 A.2d 1056, 1062 (Conn. 1987) (relying on stare decisis); Taylor v. Black &amp; Decker Mfg. Co., 486 N.E 2d 1173, 1176 (Ohio Ct. App. 1984) (same). The Restatement has also acknowledged this development with the following statement: "When recognized, this common law right [to recover for wrongful death] has been utilized to fill in unintended gaps in present statutes or to allow ameliorating common law principles to apply." Restatement (Second) of Torts 925 cmt. k (1979). NO. A-14 MARTHA NEGRON, etc., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. RAMON LLARENA, M.D., Defendant-Respondent, and LIGIJA ROCIUNAS, M.D., Defendant. DECIDED [T]he reason of the rule is to be found in that natural and almost universal repugnance among enlightened nations, to setting a price upon human life, or any attempt to estimate its value by a pecuniary standard, a repugnance which seems to have been strong and prevalent among nations in proportion as they have been or become more enlightened and refined, and especially so, where the Christian religion has exercised its most beneficent influence, and where human life has been held most sacred. Other courts have repeatedly cited this reason for the Baker doctrine.