Court Opinion

ID: 9700305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:19:10.143194+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:08:32.974784
License: Public Domain

HANDLER, J.,
concurring.
The rule of construction applicable to substantive statutes of limitation is one that focuses on legislative intent and purpose. That construction serves to explain why, in the circumstances of this case, the wrongful death statute of limitations should not be strictly applied to foreclose a wrongful death claim that was not technically timely filed. I write separately here to show that the conclusion that the legislative purpose and intent will not be frustrated by this application of the statute of limitations is fortified by the history of wrongful death actions.
*308I
In England, Higgins v. Butcher, 80 Eng. Rep. 61 (K.B.1607), was the first reported case supporting the rule that no common-law cause of action exists for wrongful death. In ruling that the husband had no cause of action for the tortious beating of his wife resulting in her death, Justice Tanfield did not distinguish between a survival action and a wrongful death action but wrote that
if a man beats the servant of J.S. so that he dies of the battery, the master shall not have an action against the other for the battery and loss of the service, because the servant dying of the extremity of the battery, it is now become an offence to the Crown, being converted into felony, and that drowns the particular offence, and private wrong offer’d to the master before, and his action is thereby lost.

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That pronouncement of the law became known as the “felony-merger rule.” The rule was repeated in another case decided seventy years later, Smith v. Sykes, 89 Eng. Rep. 160 (K.B.1677): “[I]f A. beat the wife of B., so that she dies, B. can have no action of the case for that; because it is criminal, and of a higher nature.” Ibid.
The issue of recovery for wrongful death did not appear again in any reported ease for well over a century. In 1808, Lord Ellen-borough, in Baker v. Bolton, 170 Eng. Rep. 1033 (Nisi Prius), declared: “In a civil Court, the death of a human being could not be complained of as an injury.” Ibid. Baker involved a husband suing stagecoach proprietors for his wife’s injuries and ultimate death one month later as a result of traveling in the stagecoach. Ibid. Lord Ellenborough concluded that the plaintiff could recover only for injuries he suffered while his wife was still alive but suffering and not for injuries after her death. Ibid.
Baker is the acknowledged source of the rule that the common law denies recovery for wrongful death. See, e.g., T.A. Smedley, Wrongful Death — Bases of the Common Law Rules, 13 Vand. L.Rev. 605, 613 (1960); W.S. Holdsworth, The Origin of the Rule in Baker v. Bolton, 32 L.Q. Rev. 431 (1916). Lord Ellenborough, however, cited no authority and gave no reasoning for his famous pronouncement that no action for wrongful death existed.
*309In the United States, recovery for the 'wrongful death of another went through a much different history. In fact, recovery for wrongful death seemed to have been accepted in colonial and early post-revolutionary times.
The first trace of allowing for the recovery for wrongful death appears in 1682 in Pennsylvania colonial law. The basic law applicable for the colony stated that “the estates of capital offenders, as traitors, and murderers, shall go one-third to the next of kin to the sufferer.” 24th & 25th Laws Agreed Upon in England (1682), in Duke of York’s Book of Laws 101 (1879), quoted in Wex S. Malone, The Genesis of Wrongful Death, 17 Stan. L.Rev. 1043, 1062 (1965). States generally disavowed the felony-merger rule and recognized actions for the wrongful death of another. See 1 Stuart M. Speiser et. al., Recovery for Wrongful Death and Injury § 1:3 at 1-14 n.16 (3d ed.1992) (noting that in a judicial proceeding that was both criminal and civil, the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Court of Assistants consistently allowed for recovery for the death of another); Malone, supra, 17 Stan. L.Rev. at 1063, 1065 (pointing out that reported cases show “no serious doubt was entertained as to the propriety of resort to a civil suit” and that “both fine and compensation to the surviving family were imposed indiscriminately”). Moreover, even after Baker, American courts successively did not follow its pronouncement and allowed recovery for wrongful death. See, e.g., Plummer v. Webb, 19 F. Cas. 894 (D.Me.1825) (rejecting felony-merger doctrine as having no place in American law and allowing a father to recover for the death of his son), dismissed on appeal for lack of admiralty juris., 19 F. Cas. 891 (C.C.D.Me.1827); Ford v. Monroe, 20 Wend. 210 (N.Y.Sup.Ct.1838) (affirming a verdict in favor of a father who had brought suit for the loss of services because his infant son had been run over and killed as the direct consequence of tortious act of the defendant).
Thus, by mid-nineteenth century, the common law in America recognized an action for wrongful death. Malone, supra, 17 Stan. L.Rev. at 1067 (“Ellenborough’s blunt announcement that no civil *310action can be grounded upon the death of a human being not only lacked historical support at the time but was consistently ignored in America.”); Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law 473-74 (2d ed. 1985) (“There were clear signs in the early 19th century that American courts had never really accepted the [Baker ] rule.”); Francis B. Tiffany, Death by Wrongful Act § 6 at 9 (2d ed. 1913) (“Lord Ellenborough’s rule was not universally recognized in this country.”). The United States Supreme Court itself criticized the historically-grounded justification for the rule in England, if there was any, as having “never existed in this country.” Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., 398 U.S. 375, 384, 90 S.Ct. 1772, 1779, 26 L. Ed.2d 339, 347 (1970).
II
A statutory action for the wrongful death of another was first created in England with the passage of Lord Campbell’s Act in 1846. 9 & 10 Viet. ch. 93. The preamble of the Act, included in its first section, states as follows: ‘Whereas no Action at Law is now maintainable against a Person who by his wrongful Act, Neglect, or Default may have caused the Death of another Person, and it is oftentimes right and expedient that the Wrongdoer in such Case should be answerable in Damages for the Injury so caused by him____” Id. § I. The Act also included a statute of limitations: “Provided always, and be it enacted, That not more than One Action shall lie for and in respect of the same Subject Matter of Complaint, and that every such Action shall be commenced within Twelve Calendar Months after the Death of such deceased Person.” Id. § III.
In England, neither Baker nor Lord Campbell’s Act was the subject of a reported decision until 1873. In Osborn v. Gillett, [1872-3] 8 L.R.-Ex. 88 (1873), a father brought suit against the defendant because the defendant’s servant negligently drove a wagon and horses over the plaintiffs daughter, killing her. Id. at 88-89. The father claimed that as a result of her death he suffered a loss of her services and incurred the expenses of burial. *311Id. at 89. For an unexplained reason, the case was not brought under Lord Campbell’s Act (although the Act is mentioned in the opinion) but rather under the common law. The three judge court split two to one, ruling that the common law did not recognize the wrongful death cause of action. Id. at 93, 99-100. Both majority opinions relied almost completely on Lord Ellenborough’s statement in Baker v. Bolton and the preamble to Lord Campbell’s Act that states that no action existed at common law. Ibid. However, Lord Bramwell, a highly regarded and influential jurist, see Anita Ramasastry, The Parameters, Progressions, and Paradoxes of Baron Bramwell, 38 Am. J. Legal Hist. 322 (1994), vigorously disagreed. The dissenting opinion of Lord Bramwell pointedly argued that the rule announced in Baker is insupportable by reason and cases:
But in this case it seems to me that the principle the plaintiff relies on is broad, plain, and clear — viz., that he sustained a damage from a wrongful action for which the defendant is responsible; that the defendant, to establish an anomalous' exception to this rule, for which exception he can give no reason, should shew a clear and binding authority, either by express decision, or a long course of uniform opinion deliberately formed and expressed by English lawyers or experts in the English law. I find neither. With the exception of a short note of the case of Baker v. Bolton there is no semblance of an authority on this side of the Atlantic, and the cases from the other side are merely founded on that one, and some vague notion of merger in a felony.
[Osborn, supra, [1872-3] 8 L.R.-Ex. at 99.]
More than thirty years later, a unanimous panel of the King’s Bench rejected an attempt to ensconce Bramwell’s reasoning as law by concluding merely that the rule of Osborn v. Gillett must prevail. Clark v. London Gen. Omnibus Co., [1906] 2 KB. 648 (1906). In 1917, the House of Lords recognized the Baker principle as well in Admiralty Comm’rs v. S.S. Amerika, [1917] App. Cas. 38.
American states enacted wrongful death statutes patterned after Lord Campbell’s Act, even though courts generally had recognized a common-law action for wrongful death. 1 Speiser, supra, § 1:9 at 1-35. It is both ironic and significant that only after the passage of Lord Campbell’s Act and its American counterparts did courts in this country actually announce as an *312accepted statement of the law that no action for wrongful death existed at common law.
There was no mention at all of the Baker doctrine in the United States until 1848. In the last months of that year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided Carey v. Berkshire Railroad Co., 55 Mass. (1 Cush.) 475 (1848), and the companion case of Skinner v. Housatonic Railroad Corp., ibid. The court found that no cause of action existed for wrongful death. It simply declared that the rule of Baker v. Bolton “is the doctrine of the common law.” Id. at 478. It accepted that doctrine with no acknowledgement of the previous Massachusetts and state cases allowing for recovery for wrongful death.
Other jurisdictions quickly followed that lead. Kentucky, in Eden v. Lexington & Frankfort Railroad Co., 53 Ky. 204 (1853), became the first state to cite Carey approvingly as the authoritative interpretation of the common law. New York overruled Ford v. Monroe, supra, in Green v. Hudson River Rail Road Co., 28 Barb. 9, 21-22 (Sup.Ct.1859), aff'd, 2 Abb.App. Dec. 277 (1866), holding that the common law recognized no claim for wrongful death. Connecticut adopted Baker without mentioning its own 1794 decision of Cross v. Guthery, 1 Am. Dec. 61, in which it allowed recovery for a husband whose wife had died at the hands of the defendant-surgeon. Connecticut Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. New York & New Haven R.R., 25 Conn. 265, 271-72 (1856). In 1867, Michigan also adopted the rule of Baker. Hyatt v. Adams, 16 Mich. 180.1 Only Georgia and Hawaii did not adopt the Baker *313doctrine. See W.E. Shipley, Annotation, Modem Status of Rule Denying a Common-Law Recovery for Wrongful Death, 61 A.L.R.3d 906, 914-15 (1975) (citing Shields v. Yonge, 15 Ga. 349 (1854), and Kake v. Horton, 2 Haw. 209 (1860)).
Nevertheless, despite its acceptance in American jurisprudence, the rule of Baker was routinely criticized in the very opinions in which it was adopted. See id. at 911-12; 1 Speiser, supra, § 1:5 at 1-18 n.33 (listing such cases). Justice Holmes, in dissent, also criticized the rule’s basis:
Without going into the reasons for the notion that an action (other than on appeal) does not lie for causing the death of a human being, it is enough to say that they have disappeared. The policy that forbade such an action, if it was more profound than the absence of a remedy when a man’s body was hanged and his goods confiscated for the felony, has been shown not to be the policy of present law by statutes of the United States, and of most, if not all, of the states.
[Panama R.R. v. Rock, 266 U.S. 209, 216, 45 S.Ct. 58, 60, 69 L. Ed. 250, 253 (1924).]
In 1970, the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, abandoned almost a century of precedent in concluding that the common law, in the maritime context, recognizes recovery for wrongful death. Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., supra. The Supreme Court reasoned that the rule of Baker had been “thrown into discard” even at the time of its adoption in the United States and that it was “difficult to discern an adequate reason” for its continuation in modern maritime jurisprudence. 398 U.S. at 381, 90 S.Ct. at 1777-78, 26 L. Ed.2d at 346.
In Gaudette v. Webb, 362 Mass. 60, 284 N.E.2d 222 (1972), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was faced with the question of whether the statute of limitations for wrongful death could be tolled by the infant-tolling provision in the Massachusetts code. Id. 284 N.E.2d at 225. The court reviewed its 1848 decision in Carey in light of the United States Supreme Court’s then-recent decision in Moragne. Id. 284 N.E.2d at 227-29. It was “convinced that the law in [Massachusetts] has also evolved to the *314point where it may now be held that the right to recovery for wrongful death is of common law origin, and we so hold.” Id. 284 N.E.2d at 229. The consequence of that conclusion was that the “wrongful death statutes [would] no longer be regarded as ‘creating the right’ to recovery for wrongful death,” and the statutes would be viewed as “requiring that the action be commenced within the specified period of time, as a limitation upon the remedy and not upon the right.” Ibid. The court thus allowed the infant-tolling statute to toll the wrongful death statute of limitations. Id. 284 N.E.2d at 230.2
A few other state courts have followed the leads of Moragne and Gaudette in concluding that their wrongful death actions have common law origins and thus that the wrongful death statute will be applied with common-law principles in mind. See Hanebuth v. Bell Helicopter Int’l, 694 P.2d 143, 146 (Alaska 1984) (applying the discovery rule to wrongful death actions); Haakanson v. Wake-field Seafoods, Inc., 600 P.2d 1087, 1091-92 (Alaska 1979) (stating the court is “in agreement with the spirit” of Moragne and Gaudette); Summerfield v. Superior Court, 144 Ariz. 467, 698 P.2d 712, 718 (1985) (holding that the wrongful death “statute and precedent have combined to produce a cause of action with common law attributes”); O’Grady v. Brown, 654 S.W.2d 904, 909 (Mo.1983) (holding that the wrongful death statute incorporates common law principles). But see Justus v. Atchison, 19 Cal.3d 564, 139 Cal.Rptr. 97, 565 P.2d 122, 128 (1977) (rejecting Mo-*315ragne’s logic because the California legislature had occupied the field of wrongful death actions leaving no room for common-law development); Ecker v. Town of West Hartford, 205 Conn. 219, 530 A.2d 1056, 1062 (1987) (relying on stare decisis); Taylor v. Black & Decker Mfg. Co., 21 Ohio App.3d 186, 486 N.E.2d 1173, 1176 (Ohio Ct.App.1984) (same). The Restatement has also acknowledged this development with the following statement: “When recognized, this common law right [to recover for wrongful death] has been utilized to fill in unintended gaps in present statutes or to allow ameliorating common law principles to apply.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 925 emt. k (1979).
Ill
On March 3, 1848, the New Jersey Legislature passed the Wrongful Death Act. L. 1848, p. 151. The Act was patterned after Lord Campbell’s Act. David Trauth, Actions for Wrongful Death in New Jersey, 59 N.J.L.J. 121, 121 (1936). The first section of the Wrongful Death Act generally paralleled the first section of Lord Campbell’s Act; however, it is significant that the first section did not include the opening statement from Lord Campbell’s Act that declared that no cause of action existed at common law for wrongful death. Having obviously patterned the Wrongful Death Act after Lord Campbell’s Act, the New Jersey Legislature made a conscious decision to drop the opening statement from its version.
At the time the New Jersey Legislature first acted, the only reported eases in American law were those that allowed for the recovery of damages for the death of another. Supra at 318-20, 716 A.2d at 1170. No American case had cited Lord Ellenborough’s statement of the law from Baker v. Bolton. (The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s pronouncement in Carey came at the end of 1848.) Malone, supra, 17 Stan. L.Rev. at 1067 (noting that during the forty-year interval from Baker v. Bolton until 1848, “there was no instance of a denial of a civil action for wrongful death ” (emphasis added)). Thus, it is inferable that the *316New Jersey Legislature did not include the introduction from Lord Campbell’s Act because it did not perceive that the statement was an accurate summary of the law in New Jersey or the United States.
The first New Jersey case to discuss the origins of the Wrongful Death Act was Grosso v. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Co., 50 N.J.L. 317, 13 A 233 (Sup.Ct.1888). In that case, the plaintiff was a husband who sued the defendant for the negligent killing of his wife. Id. at 317-18, 13 A 233. The Wrongful Death Act’s terms did not provide a cause of action in favor of the husband, only the wife, so the husband claimed that his wrongful death action was rooted in the common law. Id. at 318, 13 A 233. The court rejected that notion after reviewing the cases of Higgins v. Butcher, supra, Baker v. Bolton, supra, and Osborn v. Gillett, supra. Grosso, supra, 50 N.J.L. at 318-19, 323, 13 A 233. The court found that the “parliamentary declaration of what was the common-law rule [appearing in the beginning of Lord Campbell’s Act] must be decisive.” Id. at 319, 13 A. 233. Without proffering a conclusive justification for the rule, however, the court merely stated that “the rule must be held to be one ... originally created for some legal reason which in the mutation of things has crumbled away, leaving the rule so crystallized as to be immovable except by legislative power.” Id. at 321, 13 A. 233. Thus, the court concluded, the Wrongful Death Act’s exclusion of a cause of action in favor of the husband cannot be read to mean that the common law allowed for that cause of action. Id. at 323, 13 A. 233.
Seven years later, the Court of Errors and Appeals adopted the Grosso reasoning and conclusion in Myers v. Holborn, 58 N.J.L. 193, 33 A. 389 (1895). In Myers, the plaintiff sued because a doctor negligently delivered his wife’s baby causing it to die. Id. at 194, 33 A. 389. The defendant was the doctor who asked the delivering doctor to tend to the wife because the defendant, who normally cared for the wife, was out of town. Ibid. The Court rejected the trial court’s allowing recovery, basing the rejection on *317the theory that the defendant was not responsible for the actions of the other doctor. Id. at 195, 33 A. 389. However, in dictum, the Court stated that it would not allow recovery even had the appropriate doctor been sued because, ever since Grosso, “it has been considered as settled law in this state that no action will lie for an injury caused by the death of a human being” with the exception being those causes of actions covered by the language of the Wrongful Death Act (which did not cover the plaintiffs suit). Id. at 195-96, 33 A. 389. The Court approved the analysis of the Grosso court, stating that that decision was “rendered after a careful and exhaustive consideration” and “must be accepted as a correct exposition of the law on [wrongful death].” Id. at 196, 33 A. 389.
Subsequent early cases in New Jersey accepted the Grosso logic and conclusion as the settled state of the law. See, e.g. Consolidated Traction Co. v. Hone, 60 N.J.L. 444, 38 A 759 (E. & A. 1897); Callaghan v. Lake Hopatcong Ice Co., 69 N.J.L. 100, 54 A 223 (Sup.Ct.1903). That has been carried through in modern cases as well. Turon v. J. & L. Constr. Co., 8 N.J. 543, 556, 86 A.2d 192 (1952); Schmoll v. Creecy, 54 N.J. 194, 197, 254 A.2d 525 (1969); Alfone v. Sarno, 87 N.J. 99, 104, 432 A.2d 857 (1981).
Only one New Jersey case since Grosso has discussed the reasoning behind the Baker doctrine and indicated that it was insubstantial. In Giardina v. Bennett, 111 N.J. 412, 545 A.2d 139 (1988), parents claimed that the Wrongful Death Act covered the harm they suffered as a result of their child being stillborn. Id. at 414, 545 A.2d 139. The Court recited that in 1808 Baker pronounced that the common law did not recognize recovery for wrongful death, that the House of Lords adopted that conclusion in 1917, that the American states accepted that interpretation of the common law beginning with Carey, supra, in 1848, and that New Jersey, following the enactment of its own Wrongful Death Act, adopted that rule beginning with Grosso, supra, in 1888 and Myers, supra, in 1895. Id. at 422-23, 545 A.2d 139. The Court *318noted that the basis for the Baker doctrine, the felony-merger rule, was a “historical curiosity.” Id. at 423 n. 1, 545 A.2d 139.
The Court nevertheless acknowledged the “widespread adoption of the Baker rule as stating the common law.” Ibid. We recounted that the Legislature passed the Wrongful Death Act as a result of that perception of the common-law rule following Lord Campbell’s Act. Id. at 423, 545 A.2d 139. Since then, wrongful death has “consistently been regarded as ‘the creature of statute.’ ” Id. at 424, 545 A.2d 139 (quoting Schmoll, supra, 54 N.J. at 197, 254 A.2d 525). The Court thus determined that the Act’s framers intended to “occupy the field” in respect of wrongful death actions. Ibid. We then turned to the intended meaning of “person” under the Wrongful Death Act. We looked to the common law at the time the Wrongful Death Act was enacted to ascertain the intended meaning of the word “person” in the statute and concluded that “it was not generally thought that a fetus could be considered a ‘person’ ” under the Act. Id. at 421, 545 A.2d 139.
IV
The Court in Giardina, however, did not consider the issue central to the resolution of this case: the Legislature’s intended application of the Wrongful Death Act’s statute of limitations. The critical issue here remains whether, in light of the history of wrongful death actions, the Legislature by its inclusion of the two-year limitation provision in the Wrongful Death Act intended the limitations requirement to be applied strictly, inflexibly, and without regard to surrounding circumstances.
I would conclude that, based on historical analysis, the Legislature did not intend the Wrongful Death Act’s statute of limitations to apply strictly in accordance with its literal language, but rather intended that it be amenable to flexible applications depending on the circumstances consistent with its legislative purpose and considerations of policy.
The history of wrongful death actions raises inescapable doubts that the Baker principle is accurate. The proposition that there *319was no action for the wrongful death of another under the common law was not an overwhelmingly accepted doctrine in England and was certainly not an accepted principle in the United States. The doctrine was adopted abruptly, and followed uncritically, only after the Carey decision (which itself was later repudiated).
The New Jersey Legislature passed the original Wrongful Death Act before any reported American ease had denied a cause of action for wrongful death based on common law principles and after reported American cases had allowed for recovery for the death of another. Further, at the time of enactment, no case in America or England had reiterated the Baker rule. Malone, supra, 17 Stan. L.Rev. at 1067 (observing that statements that abound in the decisions of the two decades following the passage of the first wrongful death statutes to the effect that the Baker rule is “too firmly established to permit of dissent at this late date” have little support in history). Finally, the New Jersey Legislature did not include the introductory statement from Lord Campbell’s Act announcing that no common law cause of action existed for wrongful death, a legislative decision that must be deemed intentional and expressive of the understanding that such a cause of action did exist under the common law.
We are left with the conclusion that a wrongful death action did, in fact, exist at common law, but that the common-law cause of action was, in effect, overtaken by the legislative enactment. There is no evidence to suggest, however, that the Legislature was foreclosing common-law flexibility in the application of the statute of limitations. In a field such as torts, where common law origins and principles abound, legislation may incorporate common-law principles of flexibility and growth. Cf. Renz v. Penn Cent. Carp., 87 N.J. 437, 435 A.2d 540 (1981) (in determining public policy as a basis for common-law principles, Court considers legislative enactments on the same subject to be highly relevant). It has been recognized that such principles apply to general statutes of limitation, e.g. Lopez v. Swyer, 62 N.J. 267, 300 A.2d 563 (1973); O’Keeffe v. Snyder, 83 N.J. 478, 416 A.2d 862 (1980), to substantive *320statutes of limitation, e.g. Gantes v. Kason Corp., 145 N.J. 478, 679 A.2d 106 (1996); White v. Violent Crimes Compensation Bd., 76 N.J. 368, 388 A.2d 206 (1978), and to wrongful death statutes of limitations, e.g., Hanebuth v. Bell Helicopter Int’l, supra, 694 P.2d at 146 (applying the discovery rule to wrongful death actions); Haakanson v. Wakefield Seafoods, Inc., supra, 600 P.2d at 1091-92 (tolling the -wrongful death statute of limitations during the disability of a minor); Gaudette v. Webb, supra, 284 N.E.2d at 230 (same); cf. Hernandez v. St. James Hosp., 214 N.J.Super. 538, 542, 520 A.2d 773 (App.Div.1986) (ruling that the wrongful death statute of limitations did not prevent application of the doctrine of relation back); Lombardi v. Simon, 266 N.J.Super. 708, 713, 630 A.2d 426 (Law Div.1993) (same); Cochinos v. GAF Corp., 259 N.J.Super. 204, 209, 611 A.2d 1154 (Law Div.1992) (same).
Thus, history shows that in enacting the statute of limitations as part of the Wrongful Death Act, the Legislature intended that the period of limitations could be applied with common-law flexibility, in accordance with the legislative purpose, and in light of relevant considerations of public policy. Common-law flexibility incorporates the doctrine of substantial compliance and allows Negron’s complaint to be considered timely filed.
Accordingly, I concur specially in the Court’s opinion to emphasize that the history of the Wrongful Death Act not only demonstrates the correctness of the result reached by the Court in this case but indeed is highly relevant to the understanding and application of the Wrongful Death Act.
HANDLER, J., concurring in result.
For reversal — Chief Justice PORITZ and Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN, GARIBALDI, STEIN and COLEMAN — 7.
Opposed — None.

 The Michigan court proffered a moral and religious rationale for its adherence to the rule:
[T]he reason of the rule is to be found in that natural and almost universal repugnance among enlightened nations, to setting a price upon human life, or any attempt to estimate its value by a pecuniary standard, a repugnance which seems to have been strong and prevalent among nations in proportion as they have been or become more enlightened and refined, and especially so, where the Christian religion has exercised its most beneficent influence, and where human life has been held most sacred.
[Hyatt, 16 Mich, at 191.]
*313Other courts have repeatedly cited this reason for the Baker doctrine.

 Both the United States Supreme Court and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court have since put limits on the causes of action recognized in Moragne and Gaudette, respectively. E.g. Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham, 436 U.S. 618, 98 S.Ct. 2010, 56 L. Ed.2d 581 (1978) (limiting Moragne to wrongful death in coastal waters because the Death on the High Seas Act applies to death on the high seas); Hallett v. Town of Wrentham, 398 Mass. 550, 499 N.E.2d 1189 (1986) (holding that the wrongful death statute continued to be the source of procedures and remedies for wrongful death actions); Pobieglo v. Monsanto Co., 402 Mass. 112, 521 N.E.2d 728 (1988) (over a strong dissent, refusing to apply the discovery rule to the wrongful death statute of limitations because the statutory language is unambiguous). Moragne and Gaudette, however, remain sound law.