Court Opinion

ID: 9529165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:48:21.698082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:41.884524
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent, preferring to follow the rule and reasoning in the Hamilton (Iowa) case. Reading it and comparing it with the De-Ford (Missouri) case, impresses me with the superiority of its logic and reason.
Many Utah Statutes were lifted from those of Iowa. The parent of 30-3-9, U.C. A., around which this case revolves, apparently was taken from Iowa, having been enacted in 1852, Iowa’s in 1851. The statutes are identical. The statute of Missouri is not, but is similar. Under the circumstances we should give great weight to the judicial interpretation of the Iowa statute by the Iowa courts, which, in the Hamilton case, placed an opposite interpretation on its identical statute than is placed on our statute by the main opinion. We should follow the Iowa decision for the reason stated above and for reasons following.
The main opinion arbitrarily excludes the right to sue for alienation of a wife’s affections from the rights “acquired by marriage,” saying the quoted phrase means only rights between the spouses. There is absolutely no statutory basis for such a connotation. If a husband did not get the right to sue for alienation of his wife’s affections from the marriage, where did he get it? He had no such right during courtship, nor does he have such right after divorce. He has no such right where his mistress is lured away by Justice CROCKETT’S illicit suitor. There can be no logical or other escape from the fact that where there is no marriage there is no right to sue, so that it follows that a husband has to acquire his right to sue for alienation of his wife’s affections specifically, distinctly and directly from the consummation of a marriage. To say otherwise is to ignore fact and resort to fiction, putting words in the legislature’s mouth that it did not utter.
If the legislature, as far back as 1852, or at any time thereafter, had intended to-say what this court now says it said, it simply could have added three little words to its enactment, italicized as follows:
“When a divorce is decreed the guilty party forfeits all rights against the other acquired by marriage.”
Who are we to read into the statute those italicized words left out by the legislature ?'
Why is it so wrong to deny a husband access to the court in an alienation case when a divorce court already has made a finding of fact that he was guilty of conduct that already had alienated his wife’s affections?' And particularly why is it so wrong when,, as here, the husband, has been found guilty of bamboozling and perpetrating a fraud upon the court, concealing facts and then conveniently producing what he contends, are true, but unfound facts. To allow such a person now to sue for his wife’s alienated affections, after being a party to such fraud, and to have this court actually put *32the stamp of approval on such effrontery, trickery and bamboozling-, to this writer approaches an admission on our part that there is a weak link in our judicial system. The legislature no doubt worded its enactment to prevent just such miscarriage of justice and to make it easy for courts such as ours to shut the door in this litigant’s face.
The series of anomalies which Justice CROCKETT fears if we do not construe the statute as done in the main opinion will not stand the test of logical analysis. In substance- he says (1) that if the alienator fails to destroy the marriage the action may lie, but it will not if he woos beyond the divorce stage; (2) that if a remorseful seducer wishes to do penance, nonetheless, he would be tempted to woo beyond the divorce stage in order to gain statutory immunity against suit; and (3) that a husband would find himself on the horns of a dilemma who could not or would not sue if his wife’s affections were only half alienated, giving the illicit suitor a defense in such case, while, on the other hand, if he could survive the divorce stage, he would have statutory immunity. Mr. Justice CROCKETT would be correct in each of his. three anomalies if he could and would but add one important fact: That the husband had been found guilty himself of alienating his wife’s affections by being the guilty party in a divorce action.
So fraught with chance for fraud, and so distasteful as to type of litigation are suits to recover money for the alienation of a wife’s affections, that fourteen states have taken steps,1 to outlaw such litigation, including the state to the east and the one to the west of us. In spite of the tendency to relegate this type of litigation to oblivion, the main opinion here not only condones, it, but condones it where the plaintiff admittedly has been a party to a deliberate fraud upon a divorce court, whose findings and decrees we should not permit to be nullified by any weak excuse that someone deliberately concealed the truth, — all at a time when we could eliminate at least one type of alienation of affection litigation by interpreting a clear, unambiguous statute according to its plain and ordinary meaning.

. Alabama, Colorado, California, Florida, . Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wyoming.