Court Opinion

ID: 9681794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:56:36.424737+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:35.903851
License: Public Domain

*157CADENA, Justice
(dissenting).
I would reverse the entire judgment.
In concluding that the cause of action of appellants for the wrongful death of their child cannot be maintained because the suit to recover for such death was commenced more than two years after the cause of action accrued, the majority relies on the rule that where a statute creates a cause of action unknown to the common law and also “. . . incorporates a limitation upon the time within which the suit is to be brought, the limitation qualifies the right so that it becomes a part of the substantive law rather than procedural . . . . ” California v. Copus, 158 Tex. 196, 309 S. W.2d 227, 231 (1958).
By its very terms, that rule is applicable only where the limitation upon the time within which suit must be commenced is incorporated in the same statute which creates the right of action. That is not the case here. The right of action is created by Article 4671, Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann., while the time limitation is found in Article 5526, Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann., which is a general run-of-the-mill statute of limitations. The statute creating the right was enacted in 1860. Tex.Laws 1860, ch. 35, 4 Gammel, Laws of Texas 1394 (1898). The statute prescribing the time within which suit must be commenced was enacted 37 years later. Tex.Laws 1897, ch. 14, 4 Gammel, Laws of Texas 1066 (1898).
Where the period applicable to an action for wrongful death is found in a general statute of limitations, it is generally conceded that the provision is an ordinary statute of limitations and is a part of the procedural, rather than the substantive, law. Anno.: 132 A.L.R. 292, 310-311 (1941). Since the rule relied on by the majority is not susceptible to persuasive defense and apparently rests on the traditional judicial hostility to what was regarded as legislative meddling with the common law, I see no reason to extend it to cases to which it is not, by its own terms, applicable.