''Our decisions since the enactment of our wrongful death acts have made it clear that such acts are intended to protect human life, to prevent homicide, and to impose civil punishment on takers of human life. The damages awarded are punitive in nature. The personal representative in prosecuting a wrongful death action acts as an agent of legislative appointment for declaring the public policy evidenced by the wrongful death acts.”
How later courts described this case
- ''Our decisions since the enactment of our wrongful death acts have made it clear that such acts are intended to protect human life, to prevent homicide, and to impose civil punishment on takers of human life. The damages awarded are punitive in nature. The personal representative in prosecuting a wrongful death action acts as an agent of legislative appointment for declaring the public policy evidenced by the wrongful death acts.”
- “We hold that no contractual cause of action for wrongful death is created by our Uniform Commercial Code arising from a breach of warranty, and that actions for wrongful death can arise in this state and be processed only under our wrongful death act”
- “In Alabama, as generally elsewhere, punitive damages are not recoverable for breach of contract.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
FAULKNER, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. It appears to me that the legislature has provided us with a good map and compass, which the majority has read to mean one thing, and I, in the minority, interpret to mean another. I know of no words in the English language any plainer than those used in the Uniform Commercial Code. Section 2-318 of the U.C.C. provides that an action may be brought by any natural person for personal injury resulting from the breach of a warranty. The majority holds that a wrongful death action is not an action for personal injury. I know of but two ways for a person to die. One is by natural causes. The other is by internal or external injury to the body sufficient to produce death.
County One-D in this case alleges injuries which resulted in death.
This Court has held in Ambrose, supra, that a wrongful death action is an action for personal injury.
Would this Court, by the use of a time machine, digress to the period before Lord Campbell’s Act, and hold that there is no cause of action for wrongful death? Apparently so, because they have certainly reached a medieval result here. I cannot distinguish death resulting from a breach of warranty and death resulting from a tort. In both instances, the person is very dead. I suppose, in view of the majority opinion, that if the dead man had a choice, he had rather go by tort than by breach of warranty. In such instance he may go to his happy hunting ground knowing that the wrongdoer would have to make an accounting for his tortious act, whereas if injury resulted from breach of warranty, the wrongdoer would pray for his death.
The majority go further and hold that punitive damages will not lie for breach of a contract. Simplistically, the majority call contract exactly the same thing as warranty, whereas the best authorities hold that warranty is a hybrid form of action resting somewhere between tort and contract. Justice Jones correctly states that damages for death resulting from breach of warranty awarded under the Homicide Statute are punitive in nature and cannot precisely be equated with punitive damages in an ordinary tort action.
In view of the majority opinion, I believe this question should be taken up by the legislature for clarification of this very important point of law.