Court Opinion

ID: 9861043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:40:00.105303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:27:08.808350
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE EGAN, specially concurring: I agree with the majority opinion in every respect, but I wish to state why I disagree with Kessinger v. Grefco, Inc. (1993), 251 Ill. App. 3d 980, 623 N.E.2d 946, and to discuss another case so heavily relied on by the defendant, Mooney v. City of Chicago (1909), 239 Ill. 414, 88 N.E. 194. I begin with recognition that Kessinger is a thorough and scholarly discussion of an array of imposing precedent which arguably supports the defendant’s position in this case. But I believe that the genesis of all the precedent after 1909 is Mooney v. City of Chicago, which is also cited in Kessinger. I share the view of the plaintiff that Mooney no longer represents the view of the supreme court of this State. In Mooney, the decedent executed a release after he was injured and died shortly afterward. His administrator filed an action for wrongful death, and the defendant pleaded the release executed by the decedent. The jury returned a verdict for the estate. The principal issue on appeal was the failure to instruct the jury on the effect of the release. The appellate court affirmed, holding that "the cause of action released or satisfied by the instrument was an entirely different one from the [wrongful death action].” (Mooney, 239 Ill. at 422.) The supreme court reversed the appellate court and held that the appellate court’s determination that the cause of action of the decedent was different from the wrongful death action was wrong: "There was but one cause of action and there could be but one recovery or satisfaction. *** There being but one cause of action there can be but one recovery, and if [the decedent] had released the cause of action the statute does not confer upon his administrator any right to sue.” (Mooney, 239 Ill. at 423.) It is my judgment that the statement of Mooney that there is only one cause of action no longer represents the view of the Illinois Supreme Court. In support of its holding that there was only one cause of action, the Mooney court cited Holton v. Daly (1882), 106 Ill. 131. But Holton was expressly overruled by the supreme court in Murphy v. Martin Oil Co. (1974), 56 Ill. 2d 423, 431, 308 N.E.2d 583. In Murphy, the supreme court held that the heirs of a decedent could maintain a survival action and a wrongful death action. In Herget National Bank v. Berardi (1976), 64 Ill. 2d 467, 356 N.E.2d 529, the decedent and his wife were killed when an airplane piloted by the decedent crashed. The administrator of the estate of the wife brought an action against the decedent’s estate under the Wrongful Death Act on behalf of the wife’s surviving minor children. The trial court allowed the defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint because the wife’s claim would have been barred under the married woman’s act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1973, ch. 68, par. 1), which bars wives or husbands from suing their spouses for a tort committed during coverture. The defendant argued that because the wife could not have maintained an action, her heirs or representative were barred from maintaining an action under the Wrongful Death Act. The supreme court disagreed. The Kessinger court deprecated the holding in Herget, it said that the supreme court in Herget "appeared to resurrect the notion a wrongful death claim is separate from a survival action” and held that "the holding there should be limited to its unusual facts, i.e., the contemporaneous death of a husband and wife with the claim being asserted on behalf of the surviving children.” (Kessinger, 251 Ill. App. 3d at 985.) I do not read Herget to be a resurrection of the notion that a wrongful death claim is separate from a survival action. The supreme court made its position clear on that point two years before in Murphy (56 Ill. 2d at 431 (survival statute and wrongful death statute are "conceptually separable and different”)). I feel confident that the supreme court will adhere to the views expressed in Murphy and Herget, which were both written by the same justice. There were no dissents in either case. For these reasons, I repeat that I agree with the plaintiff that Mooney no longer represents the view of the Illinois Supreme Court, and I agree with Varelis, relied upon by the majority, rather than with Kessinger.