Koehler v. Waukesha Milk Co.

208 N.W. 901, 190 Wis. 52, 1926 Wisc. LEXIS 179
CourtWisconsin Supreme Court
DecidedMay 11, 1926
StatusPublished
Cited by40 cases

This text of 208 N.W. 901 (Koehler v. Waukesha Milk Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wisconsin Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Koehler v. Waukesha Milk Co., 208 N.W. 901, 190 Wis. 52, 1926 Wisc. LEXIS 179 (Wis. 1926).

Opinion

Eschweiuer, J.

Upon the conflict of evidence in this case we cannot say that it was not within the province of the jury to find as they did on the material facts of this case, namely, that a quart milk bottle with a fractured rim was delivered at the apartment occupied by the plaintiff and the deceased on the morning in question, and that Mrs. Koehler did cut the fourth finger of her right hand while lifting said bottle, and that the cut in question was the portal through which the fatal infection penetrated her blood stream, by reason whereof her death ensued.

Assuming that the negligence of defendant in delivering the bottle in the condition aforesaid can be held to be the proximate cause, in the eye of the law, for the resulting pain, suffering, and death of Mrs. Koehler — a question to be discussed later, — a cause of action arose forthwith in favor of Mrs. Koehler in her lifetime for the consequent pain and suffering intermediate the cutting of the finger and her death. Such cause of action, if any such there was, survived her death by express statutory provision, sec. 4253, now sec. 331.01, which now provides that there survives, in addition to the actions surviving at common law, actions for assault and battery, false imprisonment, or other damage to the person. This includes personal injury actions. Lehmann v. Farwell, 95 Wis. 185, 189, 70 N. W. 170; Brown v. C. & N. W. R. Co. 102 Wis. 137, 141, 170, 77 N. W. [56]*56748, 78 N. W. 771; Nemecek v. Filer & Stowell Co. 126 Wis. 71, 72, 105 N. W. 225; Klann v. Minn, 161 Wis. 517, 518, 154 N. W. 996.

The right to maintain such cause of action vests in the representative of the estate of said deceased, and the proceeds when collected are treated as personal property assets of the estate of said deceased and to be so distributed according to law.

Such cause of action is a separate and distinct one from the cause of action, purely statutory, given by sec. 4255, now sec. 331.03, which substantially follows the so-called Lord Campbell’s Act of England in 1846, abolishing here and there the common-law rule that for the death of a person there could be no damages recovered in favor of any survivor.

The conditions requisite for a recovery under such death statute are that the wrongful act charged to have caused such, death must have been such as would, if death had not ensued, have entitled the party injured to maintain an action, and the death must have been caused in this state. Sec. 331.03, supra. Suit may be brought in the name or names of those to whom the amount recovered shall, by the statute, belong as therein specified.

The two actions, however, are separate and distinct,— the one for the pain and suffering, present and enforceable from the moment of the injury; the one for the benefit of the survivors by reason of the death inchoate, so to speak, from the time of the injury to the consequent death, but ripening then and upon that event into the second and separate cause of action. As said in St. Louis, I. M. & S. R. Co. v. Craft, 237 U. S. 648, 658, 35 Sup. Ct. 704, the one is for the wrong to the injured person, the other to the beneficiaries or survivors for their pecuniary loss; one begins where the other ends. It is not a double recovery, but a recovery.for a double wrong. The two separate causes [57]*57may be joined m one'complamt, as was done here. Nemecek v. Filer & Stowell Co. 126 Wis. 71, 105 N. W. 225, supra.

By the special verdict the jury assessed the sum of $2,000 as compensation for the pain and suffering undergone by Mrs. Koehler consequent upon the injury, this being the cause of action that survived, and found that the surviving husband, who under the death statute would be entitled to recover, suffered no pecuniary loss or injury by reason of the death of his wife.

The $2,000 damages for pain and suffering, if recovered, belong as personal property to the estate of Mrs. Koehler, subject to the payment of her debts, and to be distributed, in the absence of a will, according to the statute, namely, to the surviving child, and not to the husband.

The trial court was wrong, therefore, in holding that the negligence of the husband of the deceased in the care and treatment of the wife’s finger, as found by the jury, was contributory negligence such as defeated the right of the estate to recover the $2,000 damages. The only contributory negligence that could be a bar to the right to recover on behalf of the estate for the pain and suffering would have been contributory negligence by Mrs. Koehler herself, and of all this she was acquitted, and quite properly so, by the jury.

The substantial and difficult matter still remains for determination as to whether or not there can be sustained a recovery in favor of the estate of Mrs. Koehler for her pain and suffering from blood poisoning preceding her resulting death. It presents very sharply and distinctly the question whether one who fails to exercise ordinary care, as that term is recognized in the law of negligence, in his acts, so as to avoid that which would ordinarily, and in the vast majority of cases, result in but a slight cut or puncture of the flesh by fractured glass, as here, or, as it might well be, from a nail, pin, tack, pocket-knife, splinter, or any of the almost [58]*58infinite ways in which such things occur in daily life, and which cuts or punctures, as is common knowledge, in the vast majority of instances are disregarded or have but self or home attention, and which, if followed by a lawsuit, would properly result in slight or but nominal damages, must nevertheless be held answerable for very substantial damages when the unexpected, extraordinary, and that which is out of the usual course of events, follows as a result?

Clearly the legal duty of ordinary care required in the manner of unloading a car of cordwood is very different in substance from that which is required under the same standard of ordinary care in the manner used in unloading a car of dynamite; recklessness in the latter may still well be far within the limits of ordinary care as to the former; yet each, nevertheless, has the same measuring stick, that is, that the jury are to find whether or not, in their judgment, the care exercised in each particular instance was that exercised by the great mass of mankind under the same or similar circumstances, or that exercised by that hitherto undiscovered individual, the average man.

Yet in failing to exercise ordinary care to avert that which, in the overwhelming majority of the same or similar situations, is naturally, probably, and within the field of reasonable anticipation and the experience of the average human, followed by slight or immaterial results and damages, must such person, so failing, nevertheless respond in damages to the full extent thereof when to such slight and to be anticipated results there are added unusual, extraordinary, and, as in this case, tragic elements? Or, as applied to the instant case, whether blood poisoning, which may well be within the field of reasonable anticipation of one failing to exercise due care in the management of an instrumentality of power and capacity naturally, likely, and clearly efficient to inflict substantial injury such as is a railroad train, automobile, electric power, gun, and the [59]

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Bluebook (online)
208 N.W. 901, 190 Wis. 52, 1926 Wisc. LEXIS 179, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/koehler-v-waukesha-milk-co-wis-1926.