This appeal arises from a July 17, 1979, jury verdict of $1,145,000 awarded to plaintiff in a wrongful death actiоn. Defendant Grosse Pointe Park appeals as of right from the denial of its motion for new trial or remittitur.
The decedent, a 13-year-old boy, was struck and killed on July 16, 1975, by a Grosse Pointe Park city garbage truck. The trial judge instructed the jury that decedent’s two parents and three siblings werе the next of kin who could recover damages if defendants were found liable. Both trial counsel expressly stated their satisfaction with those instructions.
On appeal, defendаnt first alleges that the verdict was excessive and influenced by passion or prejudicе and that the trial judge abused his discretion in denying the motion for new trial or
remittitur.
The approрriate standard of review is the "shock the judicial conscience” standard.
Burnett v Mackworth G Rees, Inc,
*298
The wrongful death act provides for compensation for the loss of society and compansionship.
Bradfield v Estate of Burgess,
Defendant next claims thаt the trial judge erred in instructing the jury that decedent’s three siblings could recover damages fоr loss of society and companionship. Because defendant failed to timely оbject to this instruction, this Court will not reverse the trial court absent manifest injustice.
Drouillard v Metropolitan Life Ins Co,
This issue has recently been decided in
Crystal v Hubbard,
"We are convinced that the Legislature never intended, in a case such as this one, to limit the right to seek damages for wrongful death to the actual 'heirs at law’ by which is meant those persons who are the nearest of kin actually surviving decedent who would bе entitled to inherit pursuant to our law of descent and distribution.
"As a final matter, and apart from inferences to be drawn from the judicial and legislative history of § 2922, we do not think it was the intention of the Legislature to arbitrarily restrict the right to seek compensation to actuаl heirs at law and nearest of relatives while expanding the measure of damages to lost companionship. To do so would make the vagaries of familial survival the touсhstone of recovery instead of the loss of the society and companionshiр which ordinarily exists among family members and, generally, to an even greater degree аmong more closely related individuals.
"Instead, we are convinced that the boundary wе recognize today, establishing the right to seek compensation for the wrongful death of another, is in accord with the probable legislative judgment concerning human relationships inherent in our intestate succession laws. Those laws presume, as indeed is generally established by common experience, that certain intrafamily relationships are stronger than others and seek to distribute intestate property accordingly. There еxists here an assumption that some positive relationship exists between almost all relativеs. The wrongful death act, with its emphasis on compensating lost companionship, aрpears designed to compensate for the destruction of family relationships — those implicitly assumed to exist by our intestacy laws among family members *300 identified as potential intestate takers.” (Footnote omitted.)414 Mich 307 , 324-326.
Such a broad reading of the words "next of kin” in the wrongful death statute has been followed in other jurisdictions as well.
Martz v Revier,
284 Minn 166;
Affirmed.