133 Wis. 582 | Wis. | 1907
Tbe following opinion was filed October 15, 1907:
“In any action by husband and wife to recover damages for any injury to the person of the wife sustained by or through the act, procurement or negligence of the defendant, or for which the defendant is liable, the plaintiffs may claim in the complaint, and prove and recover, all the damages sustained by both, and which might otherwise be recovered by separate actions.” Sec. 2680, Stats. (1898).
This section must “be construed as a continuation” of the same section in the Revised Statutes of 1818, and not as a new enactment in the revision of 1898. Sec. 4985, R. S. 1818 and Stats. 1898. So construed it will be observed that sec. 2680 relates to the recovery of “damages for an injury to the person of the wife.” Such “injury to the person of the wife,” as the law then stood, resulted in damages to the husband for loss of service and medical attendance, and so the section provided that “all the damages sustained by both” husband and wife for such “injury to the person of the wife” might be recovered in the same action. Numerous cases of that kind are cited in Shanahan v. Madison, 57 Wis. 276, 281, 15 N. W. 154. As there stated, such an action was under the control of the husband, and the damages collected belonged to him.
Prior to 1881 a married woman was authorized to “sue in her own name, and shall have all the remedies of an unmarried woman in regard to her separate property or business, and to recover the earnings secured to her” by the statutes then in force. Sec. 2845, R. S. 1878. That section was
By the Court. — The judgment of the circuit court is affirmed.
A motion for a rehearing was denied December 13, 1907.,