Opinion ID: 1142790
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Elam Case and Its Predecessors

Text: In Elam, the original plaintiff sued the defendant railroad based on personal injuries; the plaintiff later died as a result of those injuries. The plaintiff's daughter, Elam, as personal representative, was substituted as plaintiff; she amended the complaint to add a wrongful death claim. The trial court ruled that Elam was prosecuting two separate wrongful death actions at the same time and dismissed Elam's second action. On appeal the Court answered yes to the following question: Does the death of a sole plaintiff in a tort action for personal injury extinguish that action, so that any further prosecution must be by a new and separate action for wrongful death filed by the representative of the deceased plaintiff's estate? 496 So.2d at 741-42. The holding in Elam relies on the older case of Parker v. Fies & Sons, 243 Ala. 348, 10 So.2d 13 (1942). [1] Parker supports the rule in Elam. In Parker, the administratrix sought, after the original plaintiff's death, to be substituted as plaintiff and to amend the original personal injury complaint to include a claim under the Homicide Act. The Homicide Act is the predecessor to Ala.Code 1975, § 6-5-410. The Court in Parker held specifically that the administratrix could not amend the original personal injury action to add a claim under the Homicide Act. In reaching its holding, the Court in Parker relied on the analysis of the Homicide Act and the statute providing for survival of personal injury actions set out in two older cases, Bruce v. Collier, 221 Ala. 22, 127 So. 553 (1930), and Ex Parte Adams, 216 Ala. 241, 113 So. 235 (1927), overruled, see discussion infra. The survival statute referenced in Bruce and Adams was the predecessor to Ala.Code 1975, § 6-5-462. That statute provided, as does § 6-5-462, that personal claims on which an action had been filed would survive in favor or the personal representative, except for claims involving injuries to the reputation. These survival statutes do not reference the Homicide Act or the present Wrongful Death Act. Parker, Bruce, and Adams all agreed as to the meaning and application of the Homicide Act: Our homicide act is a death statute, a punitive statute to prevent homicides. It creates a new and distinct cause of action, unknown at common law. The cause of action comes into being only upon death from wrongful act. Parker, supra, 243 Ala. at 350, 10 So.2d at 15. This discussion applies equally well to the present Wrongful Death Act, Ala.Code 1975, § 6-5-410, and that Act remains the sole right of action for death under our law. Black Belt Wood Co. v. Sessions, 514 So.2d 1249 (Ala.1986); Mattison v. Kirk, 497 So.2d 120 (Ala.1986). In examining the basis of Parker and its application of the Homicide Act in the context of the survival statute, we turn first to the decision in Adams. The Court in Adams considered a plea in abatement under common law rules of pleading. The original complaint alleged unlawful arrest and imprisonment, and a later complaint by the administrator stated a claim under the Homicide Act based on the allegation that the injury inflicted by the unlawful arrest resulted in the original plaintiff's death. The Court in Adams began its consideration from the standpoint of strict construction of pleadings under common law and Ala.Code 1923, § 5657. That section disallowed the maintenance of two actions at the same time by the same party on the same cause of action. The Adams Court reasoned that because the original plaintiff and her later administrator had a common interest and were asserting claims, first personal injury and then homicide, against the same party based on the same alleged wrongful acts, the two actions were identical for the purposes of the statute. The Court held, therefore, that the pendency of the first suit was a defense against the prosecution of the second suit based on the Homicide Act. Accordingly, the Court ruled that the plea in abatement supported the dismissal of the later suit. Essentially, the court in Adams held that an action based on personal injury that resulted in death was the same cause of action that underlay an action under the Homicide Act. The Court's rationale was that both the personal injury action and the Homicide Act action were based on the same tortious act. The idea that the cause of action was the same, first expressed in Adams, was a key consideration in Bruce. In Bruce, the Court considered the crucial question: Does an action for personal injuries, begun by the decedent while in life, survive to his personal representative if death results from the same tort, giving rise to an action under the homicide act? 221 Ala. at 23, 127 So. at 554. Given the analysis of the Homicide Act in Adams, the Court noted that (1) originally at common law, and even in early statutes providing for survival of some actions, actions for personal injury did not survive the death of the plaintiff; and (2) the legislature later amended the survival statute to allow for survival of personal injury actions. The Court in Bruce noted that the Homicide Act was in effect before the survival statute was amended to permit survival of personal injury actions. The Court reasoned that the amended survival statute, allowing the survival of personal injury actions, has application only outside the Homicide Act, because: Two actions by the same administrator against the same defendant for the same tort, prosecuted to separate judgments, would present a situation so unusual and extraordinary that clear legislative intent should appear. Id. Although there was no explicit statement by the legislature that every action for personal injury would abate, the Court in Bruce determined that the legislature did not intend to allow both an action under the Homicide Act and the survival of a personal injury action based on the same tort. The gist of this holding is that a personal injury action survives the death of the plaintiff if and only if the death resulted from some cause other than the injury sued upon. Plainly underlying the Court's analysis is the idea from Adams that the homicide action is essentially the same action as the personal injury action where the injury sued upon caused the plaintiff's death. However, the Court in Bruce goes on to note various differences in the two actions, including differences in the nature of the damages and in the beneficiaries. That is, the Court appeared to recognize that the estate would be the beneficiary of compensatory damages in a personal injury action, whereas the heirs were the beneficiaries of solely punitive damages in a Homicide Act claim. The Parker Court expressed the holding in Bruce as follows: The statute providing for survival of actions for `injuries to the person' does not apply to actions for injuries from wrongful act resulting in death, with a consequent right of action under the homicide act. The survival statue has a field of operation in actions where death ensues from other causes. The lawmakers did not contemplate two actions by the same administrator against the same defendant for the same tort, prosecuted to separate judgments, one to recover for personal injuries for the benefit of the estate, and another for punitive damages for the benefit of the next of kin. 243 Ala. at 349, 10 So.2d at 14. In effect, the Court in Parker reaffirmed the Court's determination in Bruce of legislative intent. However, the Court in Parker was considering whether an amendment after the original plaintiff's death adding a Homicide Act claim was effective in light of Alabama's amendment statute, Ala.Code 1940, Title 7, § 239. That statute provided for liberal amendment of complaints where new or other causes of action referred to the same transaction. Under the rationale of Adams, supra, the appellant in Parker argued that the Homicide Act claim arose from the same transaction, and therefore that the amendment was permitted under the amendment act. The Court in Parker extended the discussion in Bruce with respect to the differences between the personal injury claim and the Homicide Act claim to overrule the Adams analysis concluding that the two actions were the same. Accordingly, Adams could not serve as precedent supporting the amendment in Parker. One result of Parker was a recognition that a personal injury action based on a tort that later causes the plaintiff's death was a distinct cause of action for a Homicide Act claim based on the same tort. However, the Court in Parker adhered to the rule in Bruce that, because of the similarity of the actions, the legislature intended that a claim under the Homicide Act would extinguish a personal injury action based on the same injury. That is, because of the Parker Court's view of the legislature's intent, the survival statute did not operate with respect to personal injury actions based on the same tort that resulted in the plaintiff's death. In neither Bruce nor Parker did the Court find any legislative intent that supported the limitation placed on the plain language of the survival statute. No reference to legislative history or debate is made in the Court's interpretation. Rather, the Court's determination of legislative intent appears to be based solely on its interpretation of the stringent rules of common law pleading then applicable. These common law rules of pleading were codified in part over time, so that code pleading often prescribed the practice. The cause of action was the basis of the action, the legal proceeding by which one got relief, and an important rule of the pleading practice of that day was that a new cause of action could not be added to a complaint by amendment. Spurling v. Fillingim, 244 Ala. 172, 12 So.2d 740 (1943); Stramler v. Holman, 234 Ala. 36, 173 So. 377 (1937). See generally, Bliss on Code Pleading Chapter XV (2d ed. 1887). Despite the plain language of the survival statute, having a cause of action for personal injury and a cause of action under the Homicide Act arising from the same tort was plainly duplicitous or misjoinder of causes under well-established common law and code rules. Bliss, supra. Within the context of these rules, and the Parker and Bruce interpretation that the survival statute allowed only one cause of action to arise from a tort causing death, it naturally followed that an amendment substituting a wrongful death claim for an originally asserted personal injury claim violated the prohibition against misjoinder of causes as well as misjoinder of parties. Of course, the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure, specifically Ala.R.Civ.P. 15, long ago supplanted those rules of pleading based on common law practice. Rule 15 provides for a much more liberal amendment practice, including the provision that amendments shall be freely allowed when justice so requires. Ala.R.Civ.P. 15(a). As the Committee Comments to Rule 15 specify: Under Rule 15(a) and (b) the test as to whether amendment is proper will be functional, rather than, as under present Alabama law, conceptual. Under the rule it will be entirely irrelevant that a proposed amendment changes the cause of action or the theory of the case or that it states a claim arising out of a transaction different from that originally sued on or that it caused a change in parties. The comments to Rule 15 further indicate that an amendment should be disallowed only if it would cause actual prejudice to a party. Finally, the comments state that Alabama decisions which took a more restrictive view of what constitutes a `cause of action' will no longer be authoritative.