Opinion ID: 1670701
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: nature of the action created under the wrongful death act

Text: An action for wrongful death is a purely statutory right. See, e.g., Florida East Coast Ry. v. McRoberts, 111 Fla. 278, 149 So. 631, 632 (1933). Although such an origin ordinarily requires strict construction under traditional rules of construction, the legislature has expressly provided that the Act should be liberally construed to effect its remedial purposes. See § 768.17, Fla. Stat. (2001); see also, Stern v. Miller, 348 So.2d 303, 308 (Fla.1977). [6] In that vein, this Court has long characterized the Act as creating a new and distinct right of action from the right of action the decedent had prior to death. In Florida East Coast Railway v. McRoberts, 111 Fla. 278, 149 So. 631 (1933), this Court, in addressing the import of the second clause of the Act, explained: The fact that the statute provides that an action for death by wrongful act can be maintained by the statutory beneficiaries only when the alleged wrongful death has been caused under such circumstances as would have entitled the injured party himself to maintain an action had he lived is simply a regulation of, and a limitation on, the new statutory right of action created. Sections 4960, 4961, R.G.S., sections 7047, 7048, C.G.L., the Florida death by wrongful act statutes, do not purport to transfer to the statutory representatives of a person killed by another's wrongful act the right of action which the injured party might have maintained for his injury had he lived, but those sections gave to such statutory representatives, subject to terms, conditions and limitations of the statute, a totally new right of action for the wrongful death, and that on different principles. Id. at 633 (emphasis added). In Ake v. Birnbaum, 156 Fla. 735, 25 So.2d 213 (1946) (on rehearing), we again emphasized the distinct nature of an action for wrongful death under our statutory scheme: It will be observed that the statute gives a right of action to certain statutory beneficiaries for the recovery of damages suffered by them by reason of the death of the party killed; but it makes no provision for the recovery of the damages suffered by the injured person by reason of the injury inflicted upon him. Nor was the death by wrongful act statute ever intended to afford such a remedy. It was not the purpose of the statute to preserve the right of action which the deceased had and might have maintained had he simply been injured and lived; but to create in the expressly enumerated beneficiaries an entirely new cause of action, in an entirely new right, for the recovery of damages suffered by them, not the decedent, as a consequence of the wrongful invasion of their legal right by the tortfeasor. Id. at 221; accord, e.g., Bilbrey v. Weed, 215 So.2d 479 (Fla.1968); Stokes v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 213 So.2d 695 (Fla.1968); Moragne v. State Marine Lines, Inc., 211 So.2d 161 (Fla.1968); Shearn v. Orlando Funeral Home, Inc., 88 So.2d 591 (Fla. 1956); Brailsford v. Campbell, 89 So.2d 241 (Fla.1956); Klepper v. Breslin, 83 So.2d 587 (Fla.1955); Parker v. City of Jacksonville, 82 So.2d 131 (Fla.1955); Shiver v. Sessions, 80 So.2d 905 (Fla.1955); Epps v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 40 So.2d 131 (Fla.1949). It is this characterization of the right of action created under the Act that comprises the fulcrum of the petitioner's claim that a right of action for wrongful death survived the decedent in the instant case. Specifically, the petitioner argues that this Court's decision in Shiver v. Sessions precludes the decedent's status as a co-bailee of the rental car from barring the right of the survivors to maintain an action for wrongful death. The petitioner reads Shiver too broadly.