Court Opinion

ID: 9673684
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:16:22.21973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:23.514663
License: Public Domain

O’Hara, J.
(dissenting in part). I am not prepared to abrogate judicially all interspousal tort immunity. I agree with Mr. Justice Kelly’s expressed view that this wdiole sensitive area would be better loft to legislative determination. However, the question is now^ presented for judicial determination and I do not feel I may rest upon legislative inaction because of a basic social change that has eventuated since the doctrine evolved in our State.
That change is the grave potential for interspousal injury arising out of the almost universal family ownership of a motor vehicle. The nature of the tort *607arising from its negligent operation is to me different in nature from all other interspousal redressable injury. It is peculiarly impersonal and may almost he said to be an occupational hazard of living in our present-day society. I therefore agree with Mr. Justice Souris : that a suit may be maintained, predicated upon injuries to one spouse during marriage arising out of an alleged wrongful act of the marital partner when the allegedly wrongful act resulted in the termination of the marriage by death, but only when the wrongful act alleged is the negligent operation of a motor vehicle. I join in his order of remand for further proceedings in Mosier v. Carney and in Smith v. King.
I have not disregarded Mr. Justice Black’s trenchant argument that in the case of Administrator Mosier, Mr. Carney could not be liable because Mrs. Carney could not have asserted her cause of action “if death had not ensued.”  True, but in my view, this was a bar to asserting the cause of action peculiar to her as his wife and not to the accrual of the cause of action itself. The retrospective character of the overruling is disputatious but as recently as Linkletter v. Walker, 381 US 618, 622-629 (85 S Ct 1731, 14 L ed 2d 601) the United States Supreme Court took the basic position, as I understand it, that courts must weigh the merits and demerits of this question in each individual case. In this case, I believe, as I did in Myers v. Genesee County Auditor, 375 Mich 1, that the overruling should be as to these cases and to pending and future cases. See, also, Bricker v. Green, 313 Mich 218, 236 (163 ALR 697).
As to Dood v. Mosher, I vote to affirm the order of the trial court. I, also, would award no costs.