Court Opinion

ID: 9520091
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:31:13.57378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:31.602369
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE UNDERWOOD, dissenting: Decedent was killed while working in Chicago for Holsapple Mud-Jacking Company, Incorporated. A claim under the Workmen’s Compensation Act was filed in Illinois against Holsapple by the mothers of decedent’s six children, and an award of compensation was made for the five who were minors. Apparently within the two-year limitation period, settlement of the wrongful death claim here involved was made in Arkansas with all but the two youngest minors, who lived in Chicago with their mother. It is with their claim that we are here concerned. Until this opinion I had regarded the settled law to be that minors were not exempted from the statutory requirement that a wrongful death action must be filed within the two-year period specified by statute. Lowrey v. Malkowski (1960), 20 Ill. 2d 280, cert. denied (1961), 365 U.S. 879, 6 L. Ed. 2d 191, 81 S. Ct. 1029. See also Wilson v. Tromly (1949), 404 Ill. 307; Metropolitan Trust Co. v. Bowman Dairy Co. (1938), 369 Ill. 222; Bishop v. Chicago Rys. Co. (1922), 303 Ill. 273; Hartray v. Chicago Rys. Co. (1919), 290 Ill. 85. The majority quotes at length from the 1955 amendment providing that the contributory negligence of a beneficiary which would preclude his recovery did not affect other beneficiaries. That amendment is completely unrelated to the exemption issue here, and the majority’s assertion that the amendment is indicative of a legislative intent to exempt minors from the two-year filing condition is simply, in pay judgment, a non sequitur. Much more logical is the assumption, as we have so often said, that had the General Assembly intended such a result it would have said so. People ex rel. Gibson v. Cannon (1976), 65 Ill. 2d 366, 369; General Motors Corp. v. Industrial Com. (1975), 62 Ill. 2d 106, 112; Sup v. Cervenka (1928), 331 Ill. 459, 461-62. Lastly, there is the matter of the 1977 amendment, which does expressly exempt minors from the two-year condition. The amendment, of course, is presumed, as the majority concedes, to have been intended to change existing law. But the majority attempts to avoid that conclusion by quoting substantial portions of this court’s opinion in Johnson v. Industrial Com. (1972), 53 Ill. 2d 23, which are in my judgment simply inconsistent with the majority position here. Language such as “The amendment *** must have been intended to have some meaning” and “Had the General Assembly intended *** [to exempt] minors as well as ‘mental incompetents,’ it must be presumed that it would have said so” (73 Ill. 2d at 72) does little to bolster the majority position here. I think it really quite clear that the amendment was intended to change the existing law which the trial judge had applied, and to exempt minor plaintiffs from the two-year filing condition. That amendment cannot be applied to this case because of our earlier holdings in Board of Education v. Blodgett (1895), 155 Ill. 441, and Arnold Engineering, Inc. v. Industrial Com. (1978), 72 Ill. 2d 161. I would reverse the judgment of the appellate court and affirm the judgment of the circuit court.