Court Opinion

ID: 9808039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:26:16.060184+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:08:30.469407
License: Public Domain

Clark, C. J.,
dissenting: If, as the complaint alleges, the destruction of the building and the death of the intestate occurred at one and the same instant of time, there was no moment of time during which the right to recover damages vested in her. Hence, no right to an action therefor could pass to her personal representative. If the same movement of matter and at the same instant swept her and her house out of - existence, it swept the title to the realty simultaneously into the heir. The destruction being therefore damage to the realty, which at that sáme instant of time became the property of the heir, the damage accrued to him. If so, the charge of the court was correct when be told the jury that “if they should find from the evidence that the falling of the house crushed the life out of Angeline Peoples, then she did not survive the destruction of the house, and they should answer the issue no.’ ”
When parent and child perish in the same shipwreck, nothing else appearing, the modern decisions all bold (ignoring former presumptions based upon strength, age, etc.,) that it *546not appearing that the title vested for an instant in the child, the property goes to the heir and next of kin of the parent. If the damage to the realty and the death of the mother were simultaneous, by the same reasoning, the right to recover damages is not shown to have vested in her for an instant, and the realty at that same instant devolving upon the heir, the injury is done to his realty and the compensation should go to him.