Opinion ID: 2017358
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Wycko Case

Text: Today's threshold question is whether Wycko is a precedent for holding other  or more  than that a verdict in the sum of $14,000, for what all agreed was pecuniary loss suffered by the surviving parents of a wrongfully taken 14-year-old boy like John L. Wycko, is not excessive. We say Wycko is not and never became such a precedent. The next question is whether, as debated in Currie and then in Reisig (with the Court in each instance writing separately in groups of 4, 2, 1 and 1), Wycko should be restricted to what was substance distinguished from matter obiter appearing in Wycko's opinion for reversal. Our answer is affirmative. We acknowledge that these questions should be settled with judicial promptness. The right of action for recovery of damages for pecuniary injury (or pecuniary loss as our statute uses the two terms interchangeably) is employed steadily in all Michigan circuits. We are not so obtuse as not to know that many wrongful death actions remain pending, the result of which will turn upon our decision to revisit the Wycko case, and it requires no resort to the prerogative of judicial notice to say that traffic carnage probably calls Michigan's wrongful death statute into civil play more than any other one of her legislative enactments. As for the facts at bar, they are legal duplicates of those which, in Currie v. Fiting (1965), 375 Mich 440, resulted in a substantial judgment for the administrator of the estate of Linda Kay Hopkins, deceased, against a defendant wrongdoer he had sued under our quoted wrongful death statute. Linda Kay Hopkins at the time of fatal injury was an unmarried adult. No one, by open admission of the plaintiff fiduciary's counsel, was dependent upon her or otherwise shown as having been legally expectant of receiving pecuniary aid from her, had she continued to live. [2] Here likewise the decedent father and mother, represented in this wrongful death action by their married adult daughter-fiduciary, left no kin dependent upon either of them or similarly expectant of receiving pecuniary aid from them, had they continued to live. The case before us is, therefore, a factually pertinent twin of Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe R. Co. v. McGinnis (presently cited and quoted). There the trial judge erroneously included, in his instructions to the jury, a husband-supported married daughter of the decedent as one entitled to pecuniary damages. All of which brings to the fore that judicial obligation which arises when one party to litigation demands that the Court apply a controlling statute one way and his adversary insists that it should be applied precisely the other way. 50 Am Jur, Statutes, § 223, pp 200-203, speaks tersely the duty called into play here: § 223. Legislative Intent as Controlling Factor.  In the interpretation of statutes, the legislative will is the all important or controlling factor. Indeed, it is frequently stated in effect that the intention of the legislature constitutes the law. The legislative intent has been designated the vital part, heart, soul, and essence of the law, and the guiding star in the interpretation thereof. Accordingly, the primary rule of construction of statutes is to ascertain and declare the intention of the legislature, and carry such intention into effect to the fullest degree. A construction adopted should not be such as to nullify, destroy, or defeat the intention of the legislature. [3] (Emphasis by present writer.) The present importance of the rule just quoted lies in the fact that every opinion of Wycko, Burns, Currie, Heider, Reisig and Wilson may be searched in vain for any judicial intimation that pecuniary injury or pecuniary loss were ambiguous terms, or that any assembly of the legislature, whether it be of the one of 1848, or of 1873, or of 1939, intended by either phrase to provide a damage measure for loss of the decedent's companionship, or any definition of pecuniary injury excepting that which became known in our books, and in the reports of the United States Supreme Court, many years ago. As said of the word pecuniary, in Tilley v. Hudson River R. Co. (1862), 24 NY 471 and (1864), 29 NY 252 (quoted and followed in Michigan Central R. Co. v. Vreeland [1912], 227 US 59, 71 [33 S Ct 392, 57 L Ed 456]), It excludes, also, those losses which result from the deprivation of the society and companionship, which are equally incapable of being defined by any recognized measure of damages. The fact is that all references in the prevailing opinion of Wycko, to the value of human life, to the value of mutual society and protection, in a word, companionship, etc., were gratis dicta serving only to highlight that which really had been placed in issue, namely, the question of excessiveness of an otherwise valid verdict which all eight Justices conceded was based upon clear proof of some pecuniary injury suffered by the parents of John L. Wycko. Had it been otherwise, we may be sure that Justice TALBOT SMITH, writer of the prevailing opinion, would have questioned pecuniary injury and pecuniary loss for ambiguity and then would have gone about deciding that question by the standard of legislative intent. In Humphrey's Executor v. United States ( Rathbun v. United States) (1935), 295 US 602 (55 S Ct 869, 79 L Ed 1611), the Supreme Court was asked to apply, to a question of alleged unconstitutionality of a Congressionally enacted provision, certain dicta which had been written into the majority opinion of Myers v. United States (1926), 272 US 52 (47 S Ct 21, 71 L Ed 160). Having referred to the pages in Myers v. United States which consisted of historical, legislative and judicial data bearing upon the question, (pages which correspond with our demonstrative journey, in Wycko, through the English and American history of child labor), the Court in Rathbun affirmed again that judicial expressions going beyond the point involved do not come within the rule of stare decisis. The Court proceeded (pp 626, 627): A like situation was presented in the case of Cohen v. Virginia (1821), 6 Wheat 264, 399 (5 L Ed 257, 290), in respect of certain general expressions in the opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803), 1 Cranch, 137 (2 L Ed 60). Chief Justice MARSHALL, who delivered the opinion in the Marbury case, speaking again for the court in the Cohen case, said: `It is a maxim not to be disregarded, that general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which those expressions are used. If they go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is presented for decision. The reason of this maxim is obvious. The question actually before the court is investigated with care, and considered in its full extent. Other principles which may serve to illustrate it are considered in their relation to the case decided, but their possible bearing on all other cases is seldom completely investigated.' [4] It is not difficult to recall the presentations of counsel and the specific issues that were brought up for review of Wycko. The first issue (alleged excessiveness of verdict) was primary and decisive of Wycko's appeal. The second was submitted as supportive of the first. Each proves that counsel for the plaintiff Wycko had no intention, either by request to charge in circuit, or by brief and argument in this Court, to raise and save any contention that our wrongful death statute authorized recovery for loss by surviving parents of a minor decedent's companionship, distinguished from the claimed right to recover the parents' investment in the child between birth and death. Wycko's primary issue was whether the trial judge had rightfully coerced reduction of the jury's verdict, for pecuniary injury established by the proof, from $14,000 to $7,500. The supportive issue was not that this Court should, for the purpose of bolstering the verdict, enact a new rule authorizing recovery of damages for loss of companionship. No counsel argued any such point, or attempted to cite authority for it. What plaintiff's counsel in Wycko exclusively asked for, in the trial court and then in this Court, was approval of a request to charge, the specific essence of which read as follows: One who injures another by his negligent act must, under our laws, respond in damages for that injury and the only way that damages can be ordered in our society is in terms of money retribution. Life cannot be restored but this is not to say that life has no value and a mortal jury must not shrink from the assessment of that value. You therefore are to consider the investment of these parents and the dollar and cents cost of the replacement of that investment in their son to the time of his death as the measure of their pecuniary loss. The request having been denied and the reviewable question having been raised in that manner, counsel for plaintiff Wycko stated the questions on appeal this way in his brief: I. Is a jury verdict of $14,979.50 an excessive assessment of the pecuniary loss suffered by parents because of the death of their fourteen year old son, the result of defendant's wrongful act, the funeral expenses being $979.50? The trial court answered that it was and ordered a remittitur of all monies in excess of $8479.50 failing the acceptance of which by the plaintiff the court decreed a new trial. The appellant says `No.' II. Should the measure of damages for the pecuniary loss of the parent as presently defined and limited to the worth of decedent's minor's services from time of wrongful death to age of 21 less reasonable cost of maintenance of board and room be supplanted by a new, more modern rule of damages premised on the replacement of the parents' investment in the deceased minor son from date of birth until date of death? The court answered `No.' Appellant contends it should be answered `Yes.' We behold here the substance distinguished from the dixits of Wycko. With citation of respected authority Black's Law Dictionary (4th ed, West Publishing Co.) defines dictum: The word is generally used as an abbreviated form of obiter dictum, `a remark by the way;' that is, an observation or remark made by a judge in pronouncing an opinion upon a cause, concerning some rule, principle, or application of law, or the solution of a question suggested by the case at bar, but not necessarily involved in the case or essential to its determination; any statement of the law enunciated by the court merely by way of illustration, argument, analogy, or suggestion. (p 541.) 20 Am Jur 2d, Courts, § 191, pp 527, 528 declares likewise: § 191. Identity of Questions. A prior decision on a legal point has stare decisis effect in a subsequent case only if the same, or substantially the same, question is involved in the later case. To determine whether the questions are identical or substantially so, the alleged precedent must be considered in the light of the facts and issues existing in the prior case as determined from a reading of the prior opinion as a whole. Where the facts are essentially different, stare decisis does not apply, for a perfectly sound principle as applied to one set of facts might be entirely inappropriate when a factual variance is introduced. (Emphasis supplied by present writer.) Cardozo, having considered at length the need for extracting from the precedents the underlying principle, went on to say that Judges differ greatly in their reverence for the illustrations and comments and side-remarks of their predecessors, to make no mention of their own. Then he proceeded with his always helpful advices: I own that it is a good deal of a mystery to me how judges, of all persons in the world, should put their faith in dicta. A brief experience on the bench was enough to reveal to me all sorts of cracks and crevices and loopholes in my own opinions when picked up a few months after delivery, and reread with due contrition. The persuasion that one's own infallibility is a myth leads by easy stages and with somewhat greater satisfaction to a refusal to ascribe infallibility to others. But dicta are not always ticketed as such, and one does not recognize them always at a glance. There is the constant need, as every law student knows, to separate the accidental and the non-essential from the essential and inherent. (The Nature of the Judicial Process, pp 29, 30.) In view of the Michigan authorities, considered as they already have been with our unitary wrongful death and distribution statutes of 1939 (see Currie at 460-475), it is hardly necessary to prove again that pecuniary injury in law means what it says. However, since the application to presented facts of the positive term pecuniary continues under the federal employers' liability act in all courts of the land, we may look cumulant to the judicial situation in that area. Doing so, we find that the Supreme Court has not deviated to this day from the proposition that damages for pecuniary injury exclude all thought of damages for loss of companionship, and that the ordered purpose of that thoroughly-grounded legislative and judicial term is to make sure that the net proceeds recovered by its employment in court go only to legal dependents of the decedent and such others as are able to prove some reasonable expectation of pecuniary assistance of which they have been deprived. By identification and elimination of all of Wycko's unnecessary dicta, such now is our firm purpose. In 1913 the Supreme Court decided three wrongful death cases. Each arose under sections 1 and 2 of the employers' liability act of 1908, cited now as 45 USC § 51. The cases are Michigan Central R. Co. v. Vreeland (1913), 227 US 59 (33 S Ct 192, 57 L Ed 417); American R. Co. of Porto Rico v. Didricksen (1913), 227 US 145 (33 S Ct 224, 57 L Ed 456), and Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe R. Co. v. McGinnis (1913), 228 US 173 (33 S Ct 426, 57 L Ed 785). [5] Didricksen and McGinnis followed Vreeland specifically so far as concerns today's question. In the Didricksen case it was conceded that the deceased employee's parents were the sole beneficiaries of the statutory right of action. The error of the trial judge, in instructing the jury, will be seen upon consideration of the following portion of the court's opinion (pp 149, 150): The damages recoverable are limited to such loss as results to them because they have been deprived of a reasonable expectation of pecuniary benefits by the wrongful death of the injured employe. The damage is limited strictly to the financial loss thus sustained. The court below went beyond this limitation by charging the jury that they might, in estimating the damages, `take into consideration the fact that they are the father and mother of the deceased and the fact that they are deprived of his society and any care and consideration he might take of them, or have for them during his life.' The loss of the society or companionship of a son is a deprivation not to be measured by any money standard. It is not a pecuniary loss under such a statute as this.  (Emphasis by present writer.) As said previously (ante at 271) the third case ( McGinnis ) is much like the case at bar. There the surviving married daughter, Mrs. Saunders, was in the same legal position as the presently married daughters, Mrs. Breckon and Mrs. Walker, find themselves. In McGinnis the Supreme Court ruled (pp 175, 176): The Court of Civil Appeals upheld this ruling, saying that `the Federal statute expressly authorizes the suit to be brought by the personal representative for the benefit of the surviving wife and children of the deceased, irrespective of whether they were dependent upon him, or had the right to expect any pecuniary assistance from him.' This construction of the character of the statutory liability imposed by the act of Congress was erroneous. In a series of cases lately decided by this court, the act in this aspect has been construed as intended only to compensate the surviving relatives of such a deceased employe for the actual pecuniary loss resulting to the particular person or persons for whose benefit an action is given. The recovery must therefore be limited to compensating those relatives for whose benefit the administrator sues as are shown to have sustained some pecuniary loss. Michigan Central R. Co. v. Vreeland, 227 US 59 (33 S Ct 192, 57 L Ed 417); American R. Co. of Porto Rico v. Didricksen, 227 US 145 (33 S Ct 224, 57 L Ed 456). In the last cited case, speaking of the Employers' Liability Act, we said (p 149): `The cause of action which was created in behalf of the injured employe did not survive his death, nor pass to his representatives. But the act, in case of the death of such an employe from his injury, creates a new and distinct right of action for the benefit of the dependent relatives named in the statute. The damages recoverable are limited to such loss as results to them because they have been deprived of a reasonable expectation of pecuniary benefits by the wrongful death of the injured employe. The damage is limited strictly to the financial loss thus sustained.' Then, in 1946, the Supreme Court decided Poff v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 327 US 399 (66 S Ct 603, 90 L Ed 749, 162 ALR 700, 702), an action for wrongful death arising under the same statute. The decedent left no kin save two sisters and a nephew, none being dependent upon him, and a cousin who was a member of his household and wholly dependent on him for support. The Court of Appeals decided that the cousin was barred as a beneficiary. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that The emphasis on dependency suggests that Congress granted the right of recovery to such next of kin as were dependent on the deceased. (p 401.) That is what we do now; declare pecuniary emphasis on dependency in the application of these unitary statutes. [6] Until the legislature enacts otherwise, the undersigned refuse to draw from these 1939 and 1965 statutes any inference that the body purposed the fostering of personal or litigatory competition, of dependents arrayed against nondependents of the decedent, for whatever amount his representative has been able to recover as and for pecuniary injury or pecuniary loss. Since 1939 our statutes have allowed pecuniary damages only for distribution to the surviving spouse and next of kin who suffered such pecuniary injury. They bar all return to contests as in Venneman, where an adult non-dependent son of a previous marriage took $2,000 of the $4,000 awarded the dependent widow. It will not do to say that competition between dependents and non-dependents rarely arises, or that the amount recovered will be enough to satisfy the needs of the decedent's dependents and the demands of the decedent's non-dependent companions, or that the presence or absence of a dependent or dependents of the decedent is not before us in this case and we decline to pass upon it at this time. (ADAMS, J., writing for Currie, supra at p 453.) Many a cause for wrongful death has resulted, and many more will result, in short or compromise verdicts. Many like causes have resulted, and even more will result, in judicially-approved settlements for amounts too small for the satisfaction of all such needs and demands; liability being in doubt. We conclude that no good reason has been shown for reading into our past or present wrongful death statutes any requirement that trial judges should divide recovered dollars between dependent survivors and companionate survivors; most certainly while that precise qualifier pecuniary remains in the specific statutory provision upon which all believers in damages for loss of companionship rely. Rhetoric questions aptly characterize the limited posture of Wycko. Why and what for, starting in 1848 and continuing to 1939, did the legislature insert that adjective pecuniary, before the noun injury? Why, starting in 1939 and continuing until now, did the legislature qualify both injury and loss, with pecuniary, four times by former § 691.582 (CL 1948) and four times again in 1965, by PA 146? May we say now, what we didn't say in Wycko, that pecuniary doesn't mean anything, any more, when it appears before injury or loss in a wrongful death statute such as ours? Why indeed should the fact of dependency be the controller and distributor of pecuniary recovery when FELA wrongful death actions are tried in our courts, and not be the corresponding controller and distributor when the action is brought under our unitary acts? What, then, of Wycko? It is and has been known that the narrowly prevailing opinion of Wycko, dicta and all, has been taken and is being taken by some lawyers and judges as our precedential word that damages for loss of companionship, no matter the dependent or nondependent status of the decedent's surviving spouse and next of kin who suffered such pecuniary injury, are recoverable under the wrongful death act and distributable as and for such pecuniary injury. That manifest error is the reason 5 members of this Court, one after the other or in pairs, have during the interval recorded their view that Wycko should be re-examined. [7] The inevitable sequel of those recordings was our mentioned order granting the application of these defendants for by-pass of the Court of Appeals. We hold that Wycko never did authorize recovery of death act damages over and above compensation for pecuniary injury or pecuniary loss, aside of course from the statutorily provided recovery for conscious pain and suffering, if any, and damages for the reasonable medical, hospital, funeral and burial expenses for which the estate is liable. Accordingly, and with Wycko thus shorn of all dicta appearing therein (just as was done by Rathbun, supra, with respect to Myers, supra ), we commend to the profession the rules appearing both in the Vreeland case and in our decisions of Staal v. Grand Rapids & I.R. Co. (1885), 57 Mich 239; Mynning v. Detroit, L. & N.R. Co. (1886), 59 Mich 257; Van Brunt v. Cincinnati, J. & M.R. Co. (1889), 78 Mich 530; Nelson v. Lake Shore & M.S.R. Co. (1895), 104 Mich 582; Ormsbee v. Grand Trunk R. Co. (1917), 197 Mich 576 and Baker v. Slack (1948), 319 Mich 703.