Court Opinion

ID: 9720122
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:16:43.546206+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:13.314166
License: Public Domain

Souris, J;
(concurring). Plaintiff sued in her individual capacity to recover damages for loss of her husband’s consortium resulting from his death allegedly caused by defendants’ negligence. Although a $25,000 judgment had previously been obtained against defendants in part for plaintiff’s benefit under our wrongful death act,* she claims that damages for loss of her husband’s consortium are not recoverable under that act and, therefore, that she should be allowed a common-law remedy for such loss as a natural and logical extension of our recent ruling in Montgomery v. Stephan, 359 Mich 33, in which we recognized the right of a wife to recover damages at common law for such loss resulting from the negligent injury of her husband which does not result in death.
Defendants assert that damages for loss of consortium resulting from a death caused by wrongful act or negligence are recoverable, if at all, exclusively under our death act and, hence, that plaintiff’s action was properly dismissed by the trial court on their motion. I agree, for the reasons set forth in the forepart of Mr. Justice Black’s opinion, that *498this action was properly dismissed, the death act providing plaintiffs exclusive remedy for whatever actionable losses she suffered as a result of her husband’s death.
However, I believe that plaintiff was entitled to claim and recover damages for loss of her husband’s consortium in the death action. Admittedly, there is a split of respected authority in our sister States which have pertinent statutory language identical or similar to ours on whether such losses are compensable to a surviving spouse in a death action. V/here statutes limit recovery, as does ours, to “pecuniary” injuries, some courts have held that damages to a surviving spouse may be awarded only for so-called economic losses,—that is, for loss of a husband’s support or of a wife’s services. Such, indeed, was the United States supreme court’s interpretation of the Federal employers’ liability act (which did not even contain language of limitation like “pecuniary injury”) in the case of Michigan Central R. Co. v. Vreeland, 227 US 59 (33 S Ct 192, 57 L ed 417, Ann Cas 1914C, 176), decided in 1913 and arising in Ohio. As is clearly evident from Mr. Justice Black’s quotation from Vreeland, the controlling factor was whether the loss could be measured by some standard,—was it possible to set a pecuniary valuation upon the loss? Some courts have held that the loss of a deceased spouse’s society and companionship is incapable of valuation “by any recognized measure of damages” (Vreeland, supra, p 71). But other courts have not so quickly relieved the wrongdoer of liability for such losses notwithstanding the difficulty of the task of valuation. Reference will be made to decisions from these courts later. First, however, it may be helpful to review briefly the common law, the harshness of which necessitated adoption of death acts in England and in this country, *499and recent developments in onr law touching upon the subject of consortium.
At the early common law, although a woman could not sue for damages for loss of her husband’s consortium caused by his negligent injury, her husband could maintain an action for such damages if she were the victim. See Montgomery v. Stephan, supra. But even the husband’s right to damages abated upon the wife’s death from such injuries, Baker v. Bolton (1808), 1 Campb 493 (170 Eng Rep 1033), a result compelled by the ancient common law’s insistence that no civil action could be maintained for the death of a human being caused by the wrongful act or negligence of another. Higgins v. Butcher (1606), Yelv 89 (80 Eng Rep 61). We need not explore the reasons for this rule, for they were carefully analyzed by Mr. Justice Christiancy in Hyatt v. Adams, 16 Mich 180.
Prom such a background of manifest injustice came the enactment of Lord Campbell’s act, 9 and 10 Vict, ch 93, in England in 1846. By that act damages for injuries resulting from death caused by wrongful act of negligence were allowed to be recovered at law by the executor or administrator of the decedent for the benefit of the wife, husband, parent, or child of the decedent.
American States, including Michigan in 1848, enacted similar statutes. Currently, our statute, PA 1848, No 38, as amended (CL 1948, § 691.581 et seq. [Stat Ann 1959 Cum Supp § 27.711 et seg.]), allows recovery of damages for the pain and suffering of the decedent, for the medical, hospital, funeral, and burial expenses for which the estate is liable and for “the pecuniary injury resulting from such death” to decedent’s surviving spouse and next of kin.
Thus in Michigan, by statute, the ancient common law has been modified so that an action now can be maintained for the death of a human being caused by *500the wrongful act or negligence of another. With respect to a surviving spouse’s right to recover damages in such statutory action, it is limited to his or her “pecuniary injury resulting from such death.”
As noted above, in determining what are a surviving spouse’s pecuniary injuries, many courts, including our own (In re Olney’s Estate, 309 Mich 65, 84), have construed such statutory language to limit recovery for their benefit to damages for the loss of a wife’s services or of a husband’s support. To repeat, the- theory, often expressed, is that other injuries to the surviving spouse, such as the loss of a husband’s or wife’s society and companionship (which, together with their services in the marital relation, we call their consortium), are considered not susceptible of pecuniary valuation and, therefore, their loss is not allowed to be recompensed in money.
The net result of all of this has beeu that surviving husbands and wives are entitled to recompense for losses resulting from the wrongful death of their spouses but only for some, but not all, of the elements of loss for which a husband could recover, at common law, when his wife was negligently injured by another. In other words, common-law juries in many jurisdictions are considered fully competent to measure a husband’s loss of the consortium of his injured wife,—all elements of such loss—but those same jurors, when hearing a death case brought under a wrongful death statute, are considered incapable of evaluating the pecuniary injury done to a wife or even to a husband by loss of the spouse’s consortium made permanent by wrongful death.
This was not so in Michigan, however, where the virtue of consistency prevailed for many years, perhaps at the expense of justice. For in Michigan, until 1960, neither the husband nor the wife could sue at common law for loss of consortium resulting from the spouse’s negligent injury by another.. Blair v. *501Seitner Dry Goods Co., 184 Mich 304, 314 (LRA 1915D, 524, Ann Cas 1916C, 882). Prior to 1960, we recognized no common-law right of either sponse to recover damages for loss of consortium where death did not result from another’s negligence or wrongful act; where death did result, by statute and judicial construction we permitted a surviving husband to recover for loss of his wife’s services and a surviving wife to recover for loss of her husband’s support, but for nothing more.
In 1960, however, we finally acknowledged that loss of a spouse’s consortium can be measured by a jury in a common-law action for negligence not resulting in death and that a wife’s loss thereof can be recompensed in money damages. Montgomery v. Stephan, supra. The question now is, should we acknowledge that the same loss of consortium, differing only in degree because death has made it permanent, can be recompensed likewise where damages are sought under the statute for wrongful death? That question is ours to answer as well as the legislature’s, for nothing yet in the wrongful death act, except as we construe it, bars recovery for such losses. The legislature has not said that a surviving spouse may not be recompensed in damages for loss of the society or companionship of a husband or wife wrongfully killed by another; this Court said so because we once believed such damages could not be measured judicially. Now, since Montgomery v. Stephan, supra, we know that they can, just as has been done for centuries by judges and juries in other jurisdictions in actions for criminal conversation and alienation of affections, pp 43, 44. Since such losses now can be measrrred at common law in this State in actions for negligence where death does not occur, I see no reason to continue to insist that they cannot be measured in actions under our statute where death *502does occur,—the only difference between the' losses being one of degree.
There is precedent from other jurisdictions, as well as the logic of consistency, to support the conclusion that damages may be recovered in behalf of a surviving spouse in a death action for the pecuniary value of the loss of such noneconomic interests of a marriage as are known within the concept of consortium. See Beeson v. Green Mountain Gold Mining Co. (1880), 57 Cal 20; Newton v. Thomas (1955, 1956), 137 Cal App 2d 748, 769 (291 P2d 503, 516); Spangler v. Helm’s New York-Pittsburgh Motor Express (1959), 396 Pa 482 (153 A2d 490); Vines v. Arkansas Power & Light Co. (1960), 232 Ark 173 (337 SW2d 722); Continental Bus System, Inc., v. Toombs (Tex Civ App 1959), 325 SW2d 153, 167; Nichols v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. (1961), 13 Wis2d 491 (109 NW2d 131); Johnson v. Charleston & Western Carolina R. Co. (1959), 234 SC 448 (108 SE2d 777); Complete Auto Transit, Inc., v. Floyd (CCA 5, 1958), 249 F2d 396, relying upon Blue’s Truck Line, Inc., v. Harwell (1938), 59 Ga App 305, 310 (200 SE 500, 502); Hall v. Gillins (1958), 13 Ill2d 26 (147 NE2d 352); and Moss v. Hirzel Canning Co. (1955), 100 Ohio App 509 (137 NE2d 440). There are other cases, many others. See West’s General Digest (3d ser) and its 6 decennial digests under the heading Death, § 88. See, also, 74 ALR 11, particularly § VI b, at p 72 et seq., and supplements.
It is my belief that we should now candidly announce that the obstacle to judicial ascertainment of such damages no longer exists in actions under the statute any more than it does in actions for common-law negligence. Once, long ago, this Court might well have been justified in judicially limiting the statutory language of “pecuniary injury” to preclude recovery of damages for death-induced loss of a spouse’s consortium because it was believed such *503damages were incapable of judicial ascertainment. Now, however, in the absence of other rational basis for relieving a death-dealing wrongdoer of the consequences of his acts, we must either allow recovery of damages for a .surviving spouse’s loss of consortium, the evidentiary bar being no longer an obstacle in death cases any more than it is in mere injury cases, or we must perpetuate this injustice by reliance upon what we all must recognize as a bare legal fiction of judicial impotence. I would let the financial burden rest upon him who causes provable loss to fully effectuate a permissible policy of the legislature to preserve human life “by making homicide expensive.” Western & Atlantic R. Co. v. Michael (1932), 175 Ga 1,13 (165 SE 37, 42).
Subject to the foregoing, I concur in affirmance.
Kavanagh, Otis M. Smith, and Adams, JJ., concurred with Souris, J.

 PA 1848, No 38, as amended (OL 1948, § 691.581 et seq. [Stat Ann 1959 Cum Supp § 27.711 et seq.]).