Opinion ID: 2188696
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Comparative Fault and Consortium.

Text: In Instruction No. 22, the trial court advised the jury on the law applicable to any fault of David E. Nichols and its effect on any recovery by his wife, Mary A. Nichols. Instruction No. 22 stated that: After you have compared the conduct of the Defendant, Marilyn Schweitzer, David E. Nichols, and Nancy West, if you find David E. Nichols was at fault and his fault was more than 50% of the total fault, the Plaintiff, Mary A. Nichols as Administrator of the Estate of David E. Nichols cannot recover the damages set forth as items 1 through 3, inclusive, of Instruction No. 35. However, if you find David E. Nichols' fault was 50% or less of the total fault, then I will reduce the total damages by the amount awarded under items 1 through 3 inclusive of Instruction No. 35 by the percentage of fault of David E. Nichols. Instruction No. 35 stated that: If you find Mary A. Nichols, as Administrator of the Estate of David E. Nichols, is entitled to recover, it is your duty to determine the amount. In doing so, you shall consider the following items in determining an amount which will fully compensate the Estate of David E. Nichols for the damages incurred: 1. Present value of the additional amounts David E. Nichols could reasonably be expected to have accumulated as a result of his own effort if he had lived out the normal term of his natural life. 2. The interest on the reasonable burial expenses of David E. Nichols from the time of his death until the time when those expenses would be paid. The amount cannot exceed the reasonable cost of the burial, which in this case is $4,072.32. 3. The present value of the amount of financial support which David E. Nichols would have contributed to his spouse, Mary A. Nichols, but for his death. Damages for financial support are limited in time to the shorter of David E. Nichols' or Mary A. Nichols' normal life expectancy. 4. The present value of the services which David E. Nichols would have performed for Mary A. Nichols but for his death. This is also known as loss of spousal consortium. Spousal consortium is the fellowship of a husband and a wife and the right of each to the benefits of company, cooperation, affection, the aid of the other, in every marital relationship, a general usefulness, industry, and attention within the home and family. It does not include loss of financial support from the injured spouse. Damages for spousal consortium are limited in time to the shorter of Mary A. Nichols' or David E. Nichols' normal life expectancy. The jury found that David E. Nichols was fifty-one percent at fault which thereby barred a recovery by his wife for items 1, 2 and 3 of Instruction No. 35. Item 4 which allowed a recovery for loss of spousal consortium remained viable. On this issue the jury awarded Mary A. Nichols $82,000. Jury Instruction No. 22A spoke to this issue as follows: When you consider the Plaintiff's claim for loss of spousal services, also known as spousal consortium, to Mary A. Nichols, you will not charge Mary A. Nichols with the fault of any other person, and I will not reduce the amount of damages awarded for this claim. On receiving the jury verdict, the court did not offset any fault of David E. Nichols against the award of $82,000 to his wife, Mary, for loss of consortium, even though he was adjudged fifty-one percent at fault for the accident. This was consistent with Jury Instruction No. 22. Appellants Schweitzer, however, assert this as an error of law on the ground that the fifty-one percent fault should bar the consortium claim of David's wife, Mary. We have previously considered the effect of fault by an injured person on the spouse's claim for loss of consortium. In Fuller v. Buhrow, 292 N.W.2d 672, 676 (Iowa 1980), we decided that a spouse who has been deprived of consortium through the negligence of a third party should not be barred by the negligence of his own spouse. Later, in McIntosh v. Barr, 397 N.W.2d 516, 518 (Iowa 1986), we held that a husband may not be required to contribute to a judgment in favor of his wife against a third-party tortfeasor arising out of the husband's injury due in part to his own negligence. The McIntosh jury found that Barr's wife, Joan, had incurred damages for loss of her husband's consortium in the amount of $25,000. Although her husband Richard Barr was thirty-five percent at fault in the accident, her consortium damages were not reduced thereby. We reasoned that: The services, society, companionship, affection, and other elements of consortium are valuable and necessary ingredients of a satisfactory interspousal relationship. They are not, however, the kind of services the deprivation of which will give rise to a tort action between spouses.... .... A husband's interest in consortium is a right to such services as his wife voluntarily provides him, and the law protects this interest against interference by third parties. However, because the husband's interest is only in services voluntarily provided him, a wife is not under a legally enforceable duty to provide such services. Consequently, she cannot be held liable for either negligently or intentionally denying him consortium. McIntosh, 397 N.W.2d at 517-18. When no liability could attach to Richard Barr's actions regarding his wife's damages, the negligent third party could not benefit from an offset of Richard's negligence. Id. Appellants Schweitzer correctly point out that these cases involve the loss of consortium from an injured spouse rather than a deceased spouse as in the present case. Their argument is that this difference is crucial. The crux of appellants' argument is that when the spouse injured in an accident has died, the legal remedies available are through the personal representative in the estate of the deceased spouse. From that circumstance flow all of the legal consequences of defenses to a claim and of contribution to the payment of damages. The authority most relied upon by appellants is Wilson v. Iowa Power & Light Co., 280 N.W.2d 372 (Iowa 1979). In that case, we held that the legal remedy in Iowa for wrongful death is based on a concept that the cause of action survives. Id. at 373-74. It is derivative in nature, meaning that it derives from the action the deceased would have had if he had lived. Id. As such, defenses to a claim by the deceased that he might have brought while living are also available in the same kind of a suit brought by his personal representative after death. Thus, Wilson held that the defense of contributory negligence by a deceased spouse was available to bar a claim by his spouse for wrongful death based on a loss of services and support. Id. at 374. The Wilson decision also held that this was the law under our wrongful death statute, Iowa Code § 613.15 (1975), whose elements for recovery were unaffected by a 1976 amendment to section 633.336. Id. That amendment changed the manner of distribution of damages by the personal representative of the deceased to assure that the surviving spouse and children received the money damages due them from the wrongful death. Id. (citing 1976 Iowa Acts ch. 1227, § 4). In the Wilson case, the plaintiffs initially sued for a loss of consortium. They abandoned this claim, however, during trial when the evidence showed that the deceased died instantly. The individual loss-of-consortium claim was limited to damages sustained in the period between injury and death. The Wilson opinion specifically reserved the question whether plaintiffs' separate action for loss of consortium would have been subject to the contributory negligence defense. Id. at 375 (citing Irlbeck v. Pomeroy, 210 N.W.2d 831, 833-34 (Iowa 1973)). Since the Wilson opinion, Iowa abandoned the defense of contributory negligence in its tort law and has moved from a comparative negligence to a comparative fault system. Our court since Wilson has also decided several cases involving various corollary issues to the issue considered in the present case. We now recognize that spousal consortium is an indivisible concept and embodies both the sentimental elements of a marital relationship and the services or material elements of that relationship. Audubon-Exira v. Illinois Cent. Gulf R.R., 335 N.W.2d 148, 151 (Iowa 1983). We also determined that the damages to the deprived spouse for loss of consortium continue after death of an injured spouse for the period of the lesser of their two life expectancies. Id. at 153. To avoid a double recovery, section 613.15 designates the personal representative of the deceased as the proper party to bring a suit for the loss of consortium of the deprived spouse. The independent claim of the deprived spouse thus passes to the administrator on death of the injured spouse. Id. The distinction between predeath and postdeath rights to sue was reiterated by our court in Madison v. Colby, 348 N.W.2d 202, 209 (Iowa 1984). There, the right to sue for loss of predeath consortium was again held to remain with the deprived spouse, not the injured person. Id. at 208. We have also in a slightly different context considered the relationship between the capacity to sue and the ownership of the cause of action. Troester v. Sisters of Mercy Health Corp., 328 N.W.2d 308 (Iowa 1982), decided that jurisdiction of a wrongful death action was not lost when the personal representative was discharged and subsequently reappointed. We said: Iowa Code section 611.22 provides that only the legal representative has authority to bring the action, whereas Iowa Code sections 613.15 and 633.336 outline the measure of recovery and provide for the apportionment of the recovery between the spouse, parent, and the estate. In maintaining the wrongful death action the personal representative acts in the capacity of a trustee for the benefit of the recipient of the damages. .... Initially, we believe that the capacity to sue must be distinguished from the cause of action for wrongful death. A capacity to sue is the right of a party to come into court, while, on the other hand, a cause of action is the claim itself, the right to relief in court. While it is necessary that there be a party plaintiff to commence and maintain a cause of action, the parties and the claim are separate and they exist apart from each other. Troester, 328 N.W.2d at 312, 313 (citations omitted). Recently, we dealt with the question of apportionment of damages under Iowa Code chapter 668 for loss of consortium. The issue in Schwennen v. Abell, 430 N.W.2d 98 (Iowa 1988), considered the effect of an injured spouse's fault on the other spouse's claim for loss of consortium. At trial, a jury found that Mary Abell had sustained damages in the amount of $85,000 for her loss of William's consortium. The jury apportioned fault as follows: William Abell, sixty-three percent; the Schwennen defendants, twenty-seven percent; Floyd County, ten percent. In considering the apportionment of damages, we held that Mary Abell's consortium damages should not be reduced by William Abell's fault and that that fault must be apportioned among the Schwennen defendant and Floyd County by subsequent trial. Id. at 104. This holding carried out our reasoning that as a policy matter innocent parties who have suffered a loss should not have their recovery diminished as a result of acts of another party whose fault is not imputed to them under statutory or common-law rules. Realistically, there is no fair reason for having a different result on apportionment of consortium damages when the injured spouse has died than when he is alive. We criticized the anomaly that prior to Audubon-Exira the law permitted a consortium recovery for an injured spouse or parent but denied a recovery for a more grievous loss when the spouse or parent was killed. 335 N.W.2d at 149. After thorough analysis, we changed the law and brought consistency to these rules of law. Our considerable jurisprudence on these issues has often come from the procedural and conceptual difficulties that naturally flow from the interrelationships of common-law and statutory remedies. See Schwennen, 430 N.W.2d 98; McIntosh, 397 N.W.2d 516; Madison, 348 N.W.2d 202; Audubon-Exira, 335 N.W.2d 148; Weitl v. Moes, 311 N.W.2d 259 (Iowa 1981); Fuller, 292 N.W.2d 672; Wilson, 280 N.W.2d 372; Schmitt v. Jenkins Truck Lines, Inc., 170 N.W.2d 632 (Iowa 1969). In melding these principles, we have advanced the ameliorating principles of our law of remedies while retaining the necessary procedural structures for effective adjudication. In the present case, the claim for loss of consortium was properly brought through sections 611.20, 611.22 and 613.15 (1987) by Mary Nichols as administrator of David Nichols' estate. The administrator derives whatever liability her decedent might have had through section 611.20. However, David Nichols would not have been liable for his own negligence to a third-party tortfeasor during his life for damages due to his spouse, Mary, for loss of consortium. See McIntosh, 397 N.W.2d at 517-18. Neither would his fault be considered, if he had lived, to reduce her consortium damages when third parties are found to be at fault pursuant to chapter 668. See Schwennen, 430 N.W.2d at 100-01. We therefore find that no liability can attach to Mary, as David Nichols' administrator, for David's fault on either a direct or aggregate fault theory to reduce her recovery for loss of David's consortium. The trial court's instruction and judgment entry following the jury verdict were correct.