Court Opinion

ID: 9673061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:05:31.195867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:20.039653
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
NORVELL, Justice.
The dissenting opinion filed herein recognizes at the outset that Willis v. Missouri Pacific Ry., 61 Tex. 432, and the line of cases following that decision have construed the Texas wrongful death statute as having no extraterritorial effect, and that this line of authorities must be overruled before we adopt a choice of law rule under which we could apply the Texas law rather than the Colorado law in measuring the damages to be awarded in this case.1
Under the law as it now exists, there is no choice of laws. Article 4671 does not apply to wrongful acts resulting in death which are committed outside of Texas, consequently the only basis for this purely statutory action is the Colorado statute which is enforceable in Texas by virtue of Article 4678.2
It is one thing for the judicial branch to amend a statute and quite another thing to modify a rule of common law. And, to overrule a court’s uniform interpretation of a statute which has persisted over a long period of years as evidenced by numerous decisions, is very like amending a statute. That is why the rule of stare decisis is highly binding in this field. A series of holdings by a court of last resort should operate as an axiom or new starting point, so to speak, and if a reexamination of all decisions is to be made upon all occasions, the rule would serve no purpose and there would be no certainty in the law.3
*194We make the above observations in order to clearly point out that the basis of this court’s holding is its decision to abide by the rule of stare decisis and refuse to overrule Willis v. Missouri Pacific Ry. and the line of cases following that decision.
This is not the same kind of a case as Griffith v. United Air Lines, 416 Pa. 1, 203 A.2d 796 (1964), wherein a true choice of law issue was presented and the stare decisis problem involved common law precedents. The doctrine of lex loci delicti is a court-made rule. Hopkins v. Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, 201 So.2d 743 (Fla.1967), and the abandonment of this rule in favor of some different one, such as a “significant contacts” rule, while it may involve the overruling of common law precedents on policy grounds, does not necessarily involve saying that a statute had one meaning fifty years ago and a different one today. In this latter situation, restraint rather than temerity may be the more becoming judicial virtue.
Many of the authorities cited by petitioners are either not apposite to the present case or adopt an entirely different approach to the problem. If the cases cited overrule prior constructions of statutes, they do not say so. At least, this seems to be true of the better considered cases, e. g., Griffith v. United Air Lines, 416 Pa. 1, 203 A.2d 796 (1964), and Babcock v. Jackson, 12 N.Y.2d 473, 240 N.Y.S.2d 743, 191 N.E.2d 279, 95 A.L.R.2d 1 (1963).4
We should perhaps say that we cannot accept the thesis set forth in Kilberg v. Northeast Airlines, 9 N.Y.2d 34, 211 N.Y.S. 2d 133, 172 N.E.2d 526 (1961), i. e. that while the statutory law of Massachusetts, where the wrongful act which resulted in the death of a New York resident took place, gave rise to and controlled the substantive law applicable to the action, the limitation on the recovery that could be allowed therein was procedural in nature and hence controlled by the law of New York. See also for comparison, Hopkins v. Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, 201 So.2d 743 (Fla.1967).
Petitioners’ motion for rehearing is overruled.

. In Texas & Pacific Ry. v. Cox, 145 U.S. 593, 12 S.Ct. 905, 36 L.Ed. 829 (1892), the Supreme Court of the United States stated that the holding of Willis v. Missouri Pacific Ry. was that “suit could not be brought in that state (Texas) for injuries resulting in death inflicted, * * * where no law existed creating such a right of action.” This is clearly a recognition that under the Texas court’s holding, the Texas wrongful death statute had no extraterritorial effect. This construction of the statute was apparently unchallenged until the present suit was filed.
The bindingness of a series of holdings of a court of last resort under the rule of stare decisis is determined by the “decision” rather than the opinion or rationale advanced for the decision. 21 C.J.S. Courts §§ 181, 186, pp. 289, 297. The controlling principle of a case is generally determined by the judgment rendered therein in the light of the facts which the deciding authority deems important. Goodhart, “Determining the Ratio De-cidendi of a Case,” Jurisprudence in Action, p. 191. The similarity of the facts in this ease to those of Willis v. Missouri Pacific Ry. is readily apparent.

. “At common law, no person had a legally cognizable interest in the wrongful death of another person, and no person could inherit the personal right of another to recover for tortious injuries to his body. * * * One important reason why recovery for wrongful death had everywhere to await statutory delineation is that the interest one person has in the life of another is inherently intractable. Rather than hear offers of proof of love and affection and economic dependence from every person who might think or claim that the bell had tolled for him, the courts stayed their hands pending legislative action. * * ” Harlan, J. dissenting in Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68, 88 S.Ct. 1509, 20 L. Ed.2d 436 (1968).

.When a court overrules one of its former decisions, it necessarily makes a policy decision. Because of the eumbersomeness of the amending process, the rule sometimes does not have the force in constitutional matters that it possesses in the legislative field where a construction of a statute, if unpalatable to the Congress or a State Legislature, may be changed with comparative ease. 20 Am.Jur. 502, Courts, §§ 197, 198.
Other fields in which stare decisis applies with particular force are decisions involving land titles (Cross v. Wilkinson, 111 Tex. 311, 234 S.W. 68, 1921, involv*194ing issues of both statutory construction and land titles), forms of contracts in general use, insurance policies, common law rules of long standing, upon which parties have probably relied in conducting their personal, family, and business affairs. See also, Chief Justice Bell’s discussion of “Stare Decisis — What, Why, Whither?”, contained in his dissenting opinion in Griffith v. United Air Lines, 416 Pa. 1, 203 A.2d 796, 1. c. 810 (1964).

. In connection with the Babcock ease, see, Comments by Cavers, Cheatham, Currie. Ehrenzweig, Leflar and Reese, 63 Colum. L.Rev. 1212 (1963).