99 Minn. 408 | Minn. | 1906
The defendant and appellant, as a common carrier, undertook to transport a casket containing the body of the dead wife of plaintiff and respondent. In taking the casket through a named station, it became necessary to transfer the same to another of its trains. In so doing defendant carelessly and negligently left the same out of doors upon a railroad truck, and exposed it to rain, and wilfully ignored the request of the plaintiff to place the truck under cover, so that the rain might not get into the casket and injure and destroy the same as well as mutilate the corpse. Thereby the casket was soiled and ruined, and the corpse mutilated and greatly disfigured. Plaintiff suffered great mental anguish to his damage in the sum of $1,000. From an order overruling a demurrer by the defendant, this appeal was taken.
This case is concluded by Larson v. Chase,
In Koerber v. Patek,
That this decision accords with the spirit of the earlier law on this subject is demonstrated in an article by Mr. Justice Elliott, of this court in 16 Cent. Law J. 161, and see Perley on Mortuary Law, c. IV. p. 20, et seq. No good reason is assigned for reversing that decision or for differentiating it from the case at bar. Injury to the feelings of the family of deceased spring as naturally from disfiguration and mutilation of the body by exposure to the elements as by dissection.
Nor is there any merit in the contention of the defendant that this was an action on the contract, and that therefore there could be no recovery for mental anguish because of the breach of contract. The plaintiff is right in his insistence that the present case sounded in tort. It is elementary "that a tort is a violation of legal duty and may involve as one of its elements a breach of contract." Rich v. New York,
Louisville v. Wilson,
Order affirmed.
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