Court Opinion

ID: 9854380
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:06:47.903856+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:02.876004
License: Public Domain

Hunt, Justice,
concurring.
Although I am now a subscriber to Justice Gregory’s special concurrence in Mack v. Moore, 256 Ga. 138 (345 SE2d 338) (1986), I will join in the judgment line because of the facts of this case. That judgment applies to these particular facts this equation from the common law tradition: law plus equity equals justice or, stated another way, law minus equity may equal injustice.
The surviving spouse who has abandoned his children should have no greater right to defeat their potential entitlement than were he dead. And I am satisfied for the powers of equity to provide the appropriate remedy. On the other hand, I am yet unwilling to adopt the implication that this remedy is available to minor children in all events. Where the surviving spouse has, for example, maintained the appropriate parental relationship, the vesting of the wrongful death claim in him or her includes the authority to pursue it or not.
In a case where such a claim might clearly exist the surviving spouse may none-the-less decline to pursue it in order to avoid the emotional strain such a pursuit would generate in the wake of the death. Or, there might be other reasons.
Mack, supra, Gregory, Justice, concurring specially.
To the extent the majority holding suggests otherwise, I would disagree with it.
I am authorized to state that Justice Benham and Justice Fletcher join in this concurrence.
*217Decided May 10, 1991.
Taylor & Harp, J. Sherrod Taylor, Jefferson C. Callier, for appellants.
Young, Young & Clyatt, F. Thomas Young, James B. Thagard, for appellees.