Court Opinion

ID: 9686589
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:56:42.897505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:20.531114
License: Public Domain

Oliver, J.
(specially concurring) — I concur in the part of the majority opinion which holds damages for loss of consortium stop upon the death of the injured spouse and that because plaintiff’s husband lived only a few minutes after the collision plaintiff did not sustain damages for loss of consortium in any amount capable of calculation and therefore the trial court was right in sustaining defendant’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. This part of the opinion is necessary to the decision.
*210However, the principal matter with which the majority opinion concerns itself is the establishment of a rule that a wife has a cause of action against one who has wrongfully or negligently so injured her husband as to deprive her of his consortium. This part of the opinion is not necessary to the decision in this case.
But the majority gives it special emphasis, stating: “From Acuff v. Schmit, supra, it will be seen we are committed to the rule that a wife has a cause of action against one who has wrongfully or negligently so injured her husband as to deprive her of his consortium.” However, the Acuff ease is the only one in which this court has decided this question and that decision was by a divided court.
That this question is by no means settled in this country is evidenced by the following statement in 23 A. L. R.2d 1380, in connection with an annotation upon it:
“Neither the courts nor the legal text writers are able to agree on a definition of consortium, and, while the former are almost unanimously agreed that the wife has no right of action for its loss through the negligent injury of her husband by a third person, the latter, with almost equal unanimity, feel that she should have such a right of action.”
The decisions listed in the foregoing A. L. R. annotation and its supplement service show the dissenting opinion in the Acuff case is in accord with the majority rule of the courts of this country. I would follow that rule. Therefore, I disagree with this part of the majority opinion.
I am authorized to state Judges Thompson and Peterson join in this special concurrence.