Court Opinion

ID: 9593656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:23:46.349244+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:21.780744
License: Public Domain

Pope, Judge,
concurring specially.
While I fully concur with the majority opinion, I am compelled to note a further distinction between the facts of this case and those of recent cases in which the Georgia courts have looked to the status of the marriage to determine whether interspousal immunity would bar an action by one spouse against the other. The only cases in which our courts have held the doctrine of interspousal immunity would not bar an action by one spouse (or the spouse’s representative) against another involve situations where the marriage ended in the death of one or both spouses at the time of the alleged negligent act (see Trust Co. Bank v. Thornton, 186 Ga. App. 706 (368 SE2d 158) (1988), and Smith v. Rowell, 176 Ga. App. 100 (335 SE2d 461) (1985)) or where the parties had not lived together as husband and wife for an extended period of time so that, de facto, no marital relationship existed at the time of the alleged negligent act (see Harris v. Harris, 252 Ga. 387 (313 SE2d 88) (1984)). In this case, appellant wife’s sworn statement concerning a history of abuse predating the accident stands undisputed. However, the record contains no evidence to indicate the parties were not living together or otherwise involved in an ongoing marital relationship at the time of the accident, however acrimonious it may have been. In other words, for purposes of applying the inter-spousal immunity doctrine, there is a significant difference between, as in the case at hand, a bad marriage and, as in the cases cited *724above, a non-existent marriage. Because the parties to this lawsuit were married at the time the alleged negligent act occurred, the inter-spousal immunity doctrine bars the wife’s action.