Court Opinion

ID: 9619175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:23:06.599361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:38.128307
License: Public Domain

CRAIL, J., Concurring.
I concur in the judgment but assign different and additional reasons. In 1917 the respondent, the father of the decedent, pleaded guilty to assault and battery against his wife and was convicted of the crime. This cruelty made it impossible for her to live with him and they never lived together again. That was desertion on his part. (Civ. Code, sec. 98; White v. White, 86 Cal. 219 [24 Pac. 996]; Benton v. Benton, 122 Cal. 395 [55 Pac. 152]; Grierson v. Grierson, 156 Cal. 434 [105 Pac. 120, 134 Am. St. Rep. 137]; 9 Cal. Jur. 667, 668.) Similarly in the case of Delatour v. Mackay, 139 Cal. 621, 622 [73 Pac. 454], where the husband’s habitual intemperance amounted to extreme cruelty, the,court said: “These facts clearly establish desertion of the family within the meaning of the code, and the action was therefore properly prosecuted by the wife alone.” The court records show that the respondent was so convicted. The appellant Haslam, not being a clairvoyant, relied upon the records. He could not foresee that the respondent would claim that while respondent pleaded guilty to the assault and battery he really was not guilty; and appellant did not have imagination sufficient to conceive that a trial court seventeen years later would take as substantial evidence against an innocent third party the oral testimony of respondent, made in his own interest, that he was not guilty.
“ . . . section 376, supra, has reference to the conditions existing at the time of the death of the minor child ...”
(Frazzini v. Cable, supra.) At the time of the death of the minor child in the instant case the child was living with his mother and had been living with her for more than a year, *217which selection he had a right to make, being over fourteen years of age. The boy was not only living with his mother but was contributing to her support. During all of said year he had not been supported by his father; neither had he contributed to his father’s support. When the boy was killed the father refused to pay the funeral bills. The mother took this responsibility and paid at least a part of them.
All of the above facts are undisputed, and I believe that within the meaning of section 376, and for the purposes of this action, the mother and the minor child whose death was involved constituted “his family”; that the father had deserted his family; that the mother was entitled to maintain the action for the death of her minor child; and that the appellant should not be required to pay a second time. I believe that there was no substantial evidence to support the finding of the trial court with regard to the lack of desertion.
A petition for a rehearing of this cause was denied by the District Court of Appeal on July 24, 1935, and an application by respondent to have the cause heard in the Supreme Court, after judgment in the District Court of Appeal, was denied by the Supreme Court on August 26, 1935.