Court Opinion

ID: 9545015
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:04:43.896911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:53.619123
License: Public Domain

HALLEY, Vice Chief Justice
(dissenting).
In this case the plaintiffs neither alleged in their petition nor proved at trial that they had sustained any pecuniary loss whatsoever as a result of Annie A. Coleman’s death. The petition and judgment in the wrongful death action referred to the plaintiffs as “adult and emancipated children” of the deceased. The law does not imply a pecuniary loss to adult and emancipated children. Adult children are required to prove some actual pecuniary loss before they will be entitled to a distributive share of the wrongful death award held by the personal representative. Missouri-Kansas-Texas R. Co. v. Canada, 130 Okl. 171, 265 P. 1045.
Only three Oklahoma cases have been cited by the parties or revealed by our research in which no apportionment of damages was made in the original wrongful death action and a subsequent action was brought to apportion or distribute the wrongful death fund. In two of the cases, Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Young, 107 Okl. 151, 231 P. 261; and Tackett v. Tackett, 174 Okl. 51, 50 P.2d 293, the person claiming a proportionate part of the lump, sum wrongful death judgment was entitled as a matter of law to support from the deceased. In each of those cases, therefore, it was clear that the law will imply a pecuniary loss to the particular next of kin involved. In the Aetna case, supra, it was *1010the surviving spouse who sought a share; and in the Tackett case, supra, it was a surviving minor child. In each of those cases we made it plain that the person claiming a distributive share must have sustained a pecuniary loss before he is entitled to any part of the wrongful death money judgment. Because pecuniary loss was implied in those two cases, the plaintiff in each action to distribute the wrongful death fund was not required to prove actual pecuniary loss. The majority opinion in the instant case misses the point when it fails to interpret the Tackett case, supra, in this way.
The third case which contains this same sequence of events, that is, a wrongful death judgment which makes no provision for apportionment between the next of kin, and a subsequent suit to apportion the fund is Hurley v. Hurley, 191 Okl. 194, 127 P.2d 147. In the Hurley case the parties contending for shares of the wrongful death' fund were the mother and father of deceased. They were required to prove their actual pecuniary loss because there was no implied pecuniary loss. This is or should be the same requirement to be made in the instant case.
This is the whole point of these cases. At some stage of proceedings the next of kin claiming a share of the wrongful death fund must show a pecuniary loss by reason of the death of the deceased. In the Aetna and Tackett cases the pecuniary loss was showed by .implication of law. In the Hurley case it was actually proved. In the instant case there is no implied pecuniary loss suffered by the adult emancipated children of deceased and they have made no attempt to either plead or prove any actual pecuniary loss.
Some of the statements we made in the Hurley case, supra, are appropriate here:
“ * * * Therefore those who have suffered no detriment are entitled to no compensation. * * * ”
* * * * * *
“To construe section 1053 [12 O.S. 1961 § 10S3] as fixing the amount to •which each of the next of kin is eip-titled to be that amount which he would receive under the law of descent would necessitate giving the word ‘manner’ the same meaning as ‘proportion’, and to do so would frequenty result in injustice and absurdity, since it would often require a distribution wholly at variance with the pecuniary loss sustained by the respective next of kin.” (emphasis supplied)
In the instant case it would be unjust and absurd to allow five adult and emancipated children of deceased to receive two-thirds of the fund of $13,000 paid by a tortfeasor by a consent judgment, if they have sustained no pecuniary loss. It would be even more absurd if it turns out that Annie A. Coleman had a will wherein she left her personal property to one or more of her adult children, but none to her surviving spouse. If such is true, under the holding of the majority opinion her surviving spouse would receive absolutely nothing even though he is probably the only one who sustained any pecuniary loss. See discussion in Note, 7 Okla.Law Rev. 384, 387.
Since the five adult children have neither alleged nor proved a pecuniary loss and since the law does not imply a pecuniary loss, I believe they have failed to state or prove a cause of action and that the trial court was correct in sustaining a demurrer to the evidence.
I dissent.