Opinion ID: 6328260
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: California’s Statutory Scheme

Text: Given the “manifestly unjust,” id., consequences of a rule which allowed a tortfeasor to escape all liability if his VALENZUELA V. CITY OF ANAHEIM 7 wrongful deed resulted in the victim’s death before judgment, this common law doctrine has been abrogated by “wrongful death” statutes. England started the trend back in 1846 with Lord Campbell’s Act, and every state in the union has followed suit. Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 925 cmt. a. (“In the United States also, the omission of the common law has been corrected in every state by statutes colloquially known as ‘wrongful death acts.’ Most of these are modeled more or less closely on the English Act.”). It was not the evolution of the common law but statutory law which gave rise to this cause of action. The common law did not change. California, like most states, authorizes two types of civil actions for cases where a victim dies at the hands of his tortfeasor. First, the executor of the decedent’s estate may bring a survival action. Under the state’s survival statute, the victim’s estate is entitled to recover for the “loss or damage that the decedent sustained or incurred before death, including any penalties or punitive or exemplary damages that the decedent would have been able to recover had the decedent lived, and do not include damages for pain, suffering, or disfigurement.” Cal. Civ. P. Code § 377.34(a) (emphasis added). These damages can include compensation for lost wages, medical expenses, funeral expenses, or other economic losses. It is true that California’s survival statute limits recovery to economic damages suffered by the victim before death. But while most states allow for pre-death pain and suffering damages, this limitation to pre-death damages is typical. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 925, cmt. a. (“If the defendant’s act has caused the death, in most states the survival and revival statutes are interpreted as giving the 8 VALENZUELA V. CITY OF ANAHEIM representative of the estate no more than the damages accruing before death.”). California’s wrongful death statute further authorizes the decedent’s family, separate from his estate, to recover “all just damages” incurred by the loss of their loved one. Cal. Civ. P. Code § 377.61. The victim’s spouse may bring an action for loss of consortium, which compensates the spouse for “not only the loss of companionship and affection through the time of trial but also for any future loss of companionship and affection that is sufficiently certain to occur.” Boeken v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 48 Cal. 4th 788, 799 (Cal. 2010) (emphasis in original). The availability of these damages can result in substantial recovery for the families of victims of police violence, which I discuss below. After Chaudhry v. City of Los Angeles, 751 F.3d 1096, 1103 (9th Cir. 2014), which followed the same dubious reasoning as Valenzuela but goes unchallenged here, the decedent’s estate is also entitled to recover for pain and suffering the decedent endured before death in a § 1983 action. The Valenzuela majority saw no “meaningful way” to distinguish Chaudhry,” even though, unlike here, Chaudhry focused specifically on pre-death damages. The Valenzuela majority then found California tort law inconsistent with the compensation and deterrence purposes of § 1983, despite its making available nearly every conceivable form of just damages.