Court Opinion

ID: 9668028
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:00:40.255213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:42.500803
License: Public Domain

R. M. Shuster, J.
(dissenting). I would apply the savings provision found in MCL 600.5852; MSA 27A.5852 to survival-type actions brought under the wrongful death statute as well as to death-type actions brought under that act. The wrongful death statute was intended to create one single cause of action for death caused by wrongful conduct. See In re Olney’s Estate, 309 Mich 65, 76-78; 14 NW2d 574 (1944) (Sharpe, J., dissenting); Grimes v King, 311 Mich 399, 414; 18 NW2d 870 (1945); Siverling v Lee, 90 F Supp 659, 660 (ED Mich, 1950). Under the statute one cause of action may be pressed for all damages flowing from injuries resulting in death.
The distinction between instantaneous and non-instantaneous death was developed when death actions and survival actions were exclusive of each other as two separate causes. See the discussion in Ford v Maney’s Estate, 251 Mich 461; 232 NW 393 (1930). When the Legislature passed 1939 PA 297, it obliterated the distinction between instantaneous death and noninstantaneous death in favor of creating one cause of action where death results from the wrongful conduct of another, either instantaneously or through injuries wrongfully inflicted. In re Olney’s Estate, supra, p 76; Grimes, supra, p 414. The survival act was not repealed by *247the wrongful death act, but was incorporated into the death act to form a single grant of recovery. Olney’s Estate, supra.
The majority, following Hawkins v Regional Medical Laboratories, PC, 415 Mich 420, 436; 329 NW2d 729 (1982), claims that the Supreme Court has now rejected the notion that the wrongful death statute created a new cause of action and holds that consolidation of death and survival actions in the wrongful death statute did not alter the basic nature of the causes of action. This overly technical view misses the point. The Legislature has combined the separate causes of action for death and survival and eliminated the confusion that resulted from the artificial distinction between instantaneous and noninstantaneous death. The act created one cause of action for injuries resulting in death. Hawkins, supra, pp 432-433, cited with approval Chief Justice North’s majority opinion in In re Olney’s Estate, that found the prior survival act was not "at all inconsistent with any provision in the 1939 act, except that section 1 in the latter act provides: 'All actions for such death, or injuries resulting in death, shall hereafter be brought under this act’ ”.
I do not think that Hawkins mandates the majority’s holding. Hawkins found "the interpretation given to the post-1939 death act and its relationship to the saving provision of MCL 600.5852; MSA 27A.5852, as announced by the federal circuit court in Janes v Sackman Bros Co, 177 F2d 928 (CA 2, 1949) to be correct”. Hawkins, supra, p 439. I believe that this evinces an adoption of the entire Janes rationale and not merely part of it, as the lead opinion contends. Janes analyzed the relationship between Michigan’s wrongful death act and the savings provision as follows:
*248"Since the present action is set up as a survival action under the combined remedy now granted by § 27.711, the three-year period of § 27.605 obviously applies, but is extended a maximum of three years by the provisions giving time for the appointment of an administrator in § 27.610. Cf. Szydelko v Smith’s Estate, 259 Mich 519; 244 NW 148 (1932). And plaintiff by his allegations has certainly brought his case within the limits which the combination of these two limitation statutes imposes. But even if it should develop at the trial that death was, in fact, instantaneous, and that the action is grounded in the features of § 27.711 which continue the former Death Act, we think the preferable view to be that, nevertheless, the action is not barred. Of course that would be clear were the analogies from other states suggesting the applicability of the general six-year statute to be held controlling. But the clear-cut rule as to the survival cases, the background of apparent judicial reaction that § 27.610 does apply broadly in death cases, and the legislative attempt to blot out the troublesome distinctions between these former diverse rights lead us to believe that the Michigan court will hold this exception to the limitation statute also applicable to this branch of the now combined death claim. ” (Emphasis added.) 177 F2d 932.
I think that Hawkins approved of the Janes interpretation of the relationship between the wrongful death act and the savings provision of MCL 600.5852; MSA 27A.5852.
I disagree with Ortiz v Ferris, 128 Mich App 776; 341 NW2d 215 (1983), to the extent that it revived the distinction between instantaneous and noninstantaneous death. Ortiz fosters an inconsistency between survival and death-type actions in wrongful death actions by applying the savings provision to survival-type actions only, despite the legislative intent to combine these two causes of action into one cause of action for recovery of damages where tortious conduct causes death. Consistent with Janes and Hawkins, I would apply the savings provisions of MCL 600.5852; MSA 27A.5852 to plaintiffs wrongful death action.