Cunningham v. Reardon

98 Mass. 538

• Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
• Decided: January 15, 1868
• Status: Published

Opinion

Hoar, J.

The husband who by his cruelty compels his wife to leave him' is considered by the law as giving her thereby a credit to procure necessaries on his account; and is responsible to any person who may furnish her with them. ^This responsibility extends not only to supplies furnished her while living, but to decent burial when dead. Its origin is not merely and strictly from the law making her his agent to procure the articles of which she stands in need. K it were so, the consequence would follow for which the defendant contends, that the agency would end with the life of the agent. But it is rather an authority to do for him what law and duty require him to do, and which he neglects or refuses to do for himself; and is applicable as well to supplies furnished to the wife when she is sick, insensible or insane, and to the care of her lifeless remains, as to contracts expressly made by her.

Nor is any notice to him requisite, in order to charge him for her funeral expenses, any more than for necessaries to sustain life. The burden is on the plaintiff in either case to prove the existence of the necessity, and that the husband has failed to make provision for it. But when this is established, nothing more is needed to create the liability ; and it would seem to be an idle ceremony to give notice of his wife’s death to a man who had refused her the means of sustaining life. The responsibility for funeral expenses is not a new and distinct cause of action, differing in kind, or in the rules by which it is created; but an incident to the obligation to furnish bodily support.

Judgment for the plaintiff for the full amount claimed.