Court Opinion

ID: 9714329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:35:18.581554+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:25.235440
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Schaefer, dissenting: I do not agree with the conclusion of the majority upon the question of the right of Elizabeth Dini to recover for loss of consortium. When the opinion is analyzed, it appears that the principal reason advanced for allowing the wife to recover is that a comparable action in favor of the husband had developed at early common law. The opinion recites the familiar history of that development, and convincingly demonstrates that the social and economic conditions which gave rise to the husband’s action have no relevance today. Nevertheless, apparently in order to achieve a kind of symmetry, the opinion establishes a matching right of action in the wife. It is no more than an historical accident'that the husband’s common-law action survived the enactment of the Married Women’s Act. That statute drastically changed the legal status of married women, and it is not surprising that it was narrowly construed in the early cases that considered the scope of recovery to be allowed to an injured married woman. The husband’s action has survived in theory by acquiescence and not because it has withstood critical analysis. Only a few cases have referred to it, and almost all of the references have been by way of dicta. (Blair v. Bloomington & Normal Railway, Electric & Heating Co. 130 Ill. App. 400; Chicago & Milwaukee Electric Railway Co. v. Krempel, 116 Ill. App. 253; Nixon v. Ludlam, 50 Ill. App. 273; City of Bloomington v. Annett, 16 Ill. App. 199.) The husband’s action for loss of consortium is not a vital part of our litigation processes today. In an attempt to give that action the appearance of current vitality the opinion cites Heck v. Schupp, 394 Ill. 296, decided in 1946, but that case did not involve a husband’s action for loss of consortium due to a negligent injury. On the contrary, it involved the intentional tort of alienation of affections, and the distinction between liability for intentional conduct and liability for negligent conduct still survives in the law. Subject to legislative action, it is the function of a common-law court, in a case like this, to fix the boundaries within which an injury to one person gives another a right to recover damages. Each man’s life is linked to the lives of many others, and an injury to one inevitably has its impact upon the lives of others. So far as I am aware, however, it has never been suggested that everyone who is adversely affected by an injury inflicted upon another should be allowed to recover his damages. It may be possible to argue that the relationship of husband and wife has distinctive characteristics that would justify a recovery which is denied to those who stand in other relationships to the injured person. But no such argument is advanced in the majority opinion, and it is hard to see why, for example, the wife of an injured man should be allowed a recovery that is denied to his children. If the boundaries of permissible recovery are to be extended, they should be extended upon a realistic appraisal of the factors involved, and not to achieve consistency with an outworn common-law cause of action. No such appraisal has been made. The reasoning of the majority would seem to permit an employee to recover for the damage he suffers by reason of his employer’s injury or death, in order to match the common-law action per quod servitium amisit. In addition to the substantive issues involved in establishing the new right of action, the procedural problem of the possibility of double recovery should be squarely faced. I do not understand the discussion of this problem in the majority opinion. It states: “Another reason frequently advanced in denying the right of action is that it may entail double recovery for the same injury, since the husband could recover in his action for his diminished ability to support his family. [Citations.] This argument emphasizes only one element of consortium — the loss of support. Consortium, however, includes, in addition to material services, elements of companionship, felicity and sexual intercourse, all welded into a conceptualistic unity. (Montgomery v. Stephan; Hitaffer v. Argonne Co. at p. 814.) Consequently, in this action the wife is not suing for merely loss of support, but for other elements as well. Any conceivable double recovery, however, can be obviated by deducting from the computation of damages in the consortium action any compensation given her husband in his action for the impairment of his ability to support. (Hitaffer v. Argonne Co. at p. 815.) Hence, since the possibility of double recovery can be eliminated by this simple adjustment of damages, it should not constitute a basis for denying her action, which includes many elements which are in no way compensable in the husband’s action. The ‘double recovery’ bogey is merely a convenient cliche for denying the wife’s action for loss of consortium.” The very next paragraph of the opinion, however, ridicules the possibility of dividing, or “dismembering” the “concept of consortium.” It says: “The same emphasis on the material aspect of consortium and the arbitrary separation of the various elements of consortium is evident in the argument favored in some of the cases that since the wife has no right to her husband’s services, she can have no action for loss of consortium, for the law does not allow recovery for sentimental services. (Stout v. Kansas City Terminal Railroad Co. (1913), 172 Mo. App. 113, 157 S.W. 1019; cases cited 23 A.L.R. 2d 1395.) This argument not only gratuitously assumes that the concept of consortium is capable of dismemberment into material services and sentimental services — which is but a theoretician’s boast — but also overlooks the case law allowing the husband recovery for loss of consortium even where there is no loss of his wife’s services, as well as the actions for criminal conversation and alienation of affections where damages are given for the so-called ‘sentimental services.’ (Montgomery v. Stephan at p. 232; Hitaffer v. Argonne Co. at p. 815.) Hence, the denial of the wife’s action cannot logically be predicated on her inability to allege a loss of services according to medieval pleading practices.” Adjectives, adverbs and epithets can neither solve nor eliminate the problem. When two overlapping causes of action are made to grow where one has grown before, the possibility of double recovery is real. It cannot be obviated by the method suggested in the majority opinion, because there is no assurance that the wife’s action will be tried first, or even that the two actions will be filed in the same court. A requirement of compulsory joinder of the two causes of action would help, but no such requirement exists. I think that this court should refuse to sanction the new action, as other courts that squarely faced the substantive and procedural problems have done. Kronenbitter v. Washburn Wire Co. (1958), 4 N.Y.2d 524, 151 N.E.2d 898; Deshotel v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Co. (1958), 50 Cal. 2d 664, 328 P.2d 449; Neuberg v. Bobowicz 401 Pa. 146, 162 A.2d 601; Snodgrass v. CherryBurrell Corp. (N.H. 1960), 164 A.2d (Adv. Op.) 579. On the issue of the liability of the owners of the building to Gino Dini and to the administratrix of the estate of Edward J. Duller, I think that the defendant’s motion for a new trial should have been allowed. The majority concedes that it was error to exclude the reports of the inspection of the building, and attempts to minimize the error. But much of the testimony as to alleged violations of ordinances on the part of the owners of the building was quite unsatisfactory. The issue was a crucial one, and I do not believe that the serious question raised by the exclusion of this evidence should be sloughed off. I think, too, that the motion for a new trial should have been allowed because the plaintiff argued to the jury, without any support whatsoever in the evidence, that the owners of the building had themselves started the fire. This unwarranted argument was extremely prejudicial, and I do not see how the prejudice could be eliminated short of a new trial.