Court Opinion

ID: 9648408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:19:30.972547+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:00.455386
License: Public Domain

HENLEY, Judge
(dissenting).
I have the view that the right of action for the wrongful death of Wilma Sue Burns is in her mother to the exclusion of the administrator of her estate.
Section 537.080, RSMo 1969, V.A.M.S., supplanted § 537.070, which was repealed in 1955,1 and gives, as did § 537.070 and its predecessors, a right of action for wrongful death where none existed at common law. In addition, it provides, as did § 537.-070, to whom the right of action for damages survives and sets up priorities among those persons. As enacted in 1955, subsection (3) of § 537.080 had reference solely to actions for the wrongful death of unmarried minors and gave the right of action to the surviving parent or parents; rights of action for any other persons was in the husband or wife, (subsection (1)); the minor child or children (subsection (2)) ; or, if there be no husband, wife, minor child or children, or if deceased be an unmarried minor and there be no father or *566mother, then in the administrator or executor (subsection (4)).
In the 1967 amendment,2 insofar as it related to the right of action of the husband or wife or minor child or children, subsections (1) and (2) of the 1955 law were combined or consolidated into one subsection, subsection (1). Further, in the drafting of the 1967 amendment to this section, what had been subsection (3) of the 1955 law having reference solely to actions for wrongful death of an unmarried minor, became subsection (2) and in the process of amendment there was added to this subsection a right of action by the mother and father for the wrongful death of any person, not a minor, who is not survived by a spouse or minor children. In the 1967 amendment the same right of action for the wrongful death of any person (including the right of action for death of unmarried minors not survived by mother or father) not survived by a spouse or minor child or children, is also given to the executor or administrator, subsection (3). In other words, subsections (2) and (3) give a right of action to both the mother or father and the executor or administrator for the wrongful death of any person, not a minor, who is not survived by a spouse or minor children.
However, because of the history of this section and decisions of the courts prior to the 1967 amendment, I doubt that the general assembly intended to vest the right of action in two classes of persons at the same time. The general assembly no doubt intended that one class have priority over the other, and that that class was the first named. I would so hold. Consequently, I would hold that the mother or father, as the first class named (subsection (2)), has prior right to the action over the executor or administrator, the second class named (subsection (3)).
For the above reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. Laws of 1955, p. 778, § 1.

. Laws of 1967, p. 663, § 1.