Court Opinion

ID: 9579840
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:59:09.535475+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:49.525321
License: Public Domain

Legge, Acting Justice.
Appellant brought this action to recover damages for loss of consortium resulting from personal injuries alleged to have been inflicted upon her husband through the negligent operation of an automobile owned by one of the respondents and being driven at the time by the other. Respondents demurred to the complaint upon the ground that it stated no cause of action recognized or existing under the laws of this state. Appeal is from an order sustaining the demurrer.
Recovery by the wife for loss of consortium resulting from negligent misconduct of a third person was mot permitted at common law. 27 Am. Jur., Husband and Wife, Sections 513, 514; 41 C. J. S., Husband and Wife, § 404. In Hitaffer v. Argonne Co. (1950), 87 App. D. C. 57, 183 F. (2d) 811, 23 A. L. R. (2d) 1366, the court, acknowledging the existence of this rule and unanimous adherence to it in every jurisdiction in this country in which it had been challenged, repudiated it as unjust, founded on specious reasoning, and demonstrably undesirable. That de-: cisión is a forceful and appealing argument against the discriminatory rule of the common law which in negligence cases permits one spouse to recover for loss of consortium but denies that right to the other. It has been reviewed by the courts of many states. A small minority have followed its *518doctrine; most have refused to do so for the same reason that compels our rejection of it: that it is the function of the legislature, not the courts, to make, amend or repeal laws. Cf. Ripley v. Ewell (Fla. 1952), 61 So. (2d) 420; Nickel v. Hardware Mutual Casualty Co. (1955), 269 Wis. 647, 70 N. W. (2d) 205; Coastal Tank Lines v. Canoles (1955), 207 Md. 37, 113 A. (2d) 82; Deshotel v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co. (1958), 50 Cal. (2d) 664, 328 P. (2d) 449; Smith v. United Construction Workers (1960), 271 Ala. 42, 122 So. (2d) 153.
It is not for this court to repudiate the common law rule because we may think it illogical or undesirable. We do not have the right “to repeal, alter, modify, or change the law of the land, even when it plainly appears that the law in force may be wrong.” O’Hagan v. Fraternal Aid Union, 144 S. C. 84, 141 S. E. 893, 57 A. L. R. 397.
Appellant presses here the same argument that the court made in Hitaffer v. Argonne Co., supra, viz.: that the right of the wife to maintain an action such as this for loss of consortium existed at common law, her inability to assert it being due to the disability of coverture; and that the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act simply removed that disability, thus rendering available to her 'a right that had always existed. We find ourselves unable to agree with this contention. If such a right had existed under the common law the wife could have maintained the action prior to the Married Women’s Property Act by simple joinder of the husband. Best v. Samuel Fox & Co. (England, 1951), 2 K. B. 639, as quoted in Coastal Tank Lines v. Canoles, supra.
Since there has been no legislative action in this state relating to the matter, we must be governed by the policy of the common law, which denies to the wife the right to maintain an action, based on negligence, for loss of consortium.
“It is often the function of the courts by their judgments to establish public policy where none on the subject exists. But overthrow by the courts of exist*519ing public policy is quite another matter. That its establishment may have resulted from decisional, rather'than statutory, law, is in our opinion, immaterial. Once firmly rooted, such policy becomes in effect a rule of conduct or of property within the state. In the exercise of proper judicial self-restraint, the courts should leave it to the people, through their elected representatives in the General Assembly, to say whether or not it should be revised or discarded.” Rogers v. Florence Printing Co., 233 S. C. 567, 106 S. E. (2d) 258.
Affirmed.
Taylor, C. J., and Moss, J.., concur.
Lewis and Bussey, JJ., dissent.