Court Opinion

ID: 9721569
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:02:35.121779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:27.274036
License: Public Domain

Black, J.
(concurring). Notable here is the absence of question regarding interest calculated upon those special damages which, for the past 32 years, *691have been provided by the wrongful death statute of 1939, No. 297 and the succeeding enactments thereof.1 2Had such special damages been claimed, this plaintiff would have been entitled—upon request—to a separate and appropriately worded interest-bearing charge, extended at the legal rate over the period between sufferance of those damages and the time of the jury’s verdict. The special damages referred to appeared in the act of 1939, and remain now: “ * * * and also damages for the reasonable medical, hospital, funeral and burial expenses for which the estate is liable and reasonable compensation for the pain and suffering, while conscious, undergone by such deceased person during the period intervening between the time of the inflicting of such injuries and his death: * * * .”2
We must not forget that wrongful death actions are purely statutory; also that the measure of damages for pecuniary injury as it was prior to the effective date of the act of 1939, and the measure for both pecuniary injury and pecuniary loss as it has stood since that effective date, has been set up in the statute itself. The exclusive determination of that measure, in terms of dollars, was expressly left to and remains now with “the court or jury”; hence the act of 1966  has no application to wrongful death actions.
There can he little doubt about legislative intent in the regard just stated. The act of 1939, the amendment of 1965, and now the amendment of not *692yet effective 1971 PA 65, all provide in the same words the right to such special damages. The single exception in the statutory phrasing appears in the act of 1965, where “in” was left out before “every,” doubtless due to a copying error. Otherwise the phrase has read, uniformly; “and in every such action the court or jury may give such damages, as the court or jury, shall deem fair and just,” with reference to the specially allowable damages (which to the present time have been confined to “pecuniary injury”, “pecuniary loss”, and the special damages mentioned above). To the writer, this spells out that “the court or jury” is the appointed determiner in the trial court of the entire amount of damages the plaintiff fiduciary is entitled to recover under the statute, and that interest at the legal rate starts to accrue upon the amount thus determined from the date of finding or verdict.
When a wrongful death action is tried to a jury all that is needed is proper instruction concerning additur of interest upon damages found as having been sustained prior to verdict, and present value instructions with respect to damages found as due for sufferance in the future. Hence I perceive no reason for departure from well known instructional rule's of the past (see Larsen v Home Telephone Co, 164 Mich 295, 324, 328 [1911] and Currie v Fiting, 375 Mich at 454, 455, 488, 489 [1965]).

 This statute, amended by currently effective 1965 PA 146, is citable now as MOLA 600.2922; MSA 27A.2922.

 The then new title of the act of 1939 is of significance in determining the original and present legislative purpose (PA 1939, p 687):
“An act requiring compensation for causing death and injuries resulting in death by wrongful act, neglect or default; to prescribe the measure of damages recoverable and the distribution thereof; and to repeal inconsistent acts.” (Emphasis by present writer.)