WIVES’ RIGHTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 146, 20 May 1930, Page 11

WIVES’ RIGHTS.

CANNOT SUE FOR LOSS OF HUSBAND. ONE JUDGE DISSENTS FROM DECISION. Four judges of the High Court of Australia recently decided that a married woman, whose husband is enticed away from her by another woman, has no right of action against the second woman for damages for the loss of her husband. The fifth—Justice Sir Isaac Isaacs —dissented. “I utterly reject the view that consortium, in point of law, means, on the part of the woman, her society and services, and on tho part of tho man the one duty of cash lemuneration in maintaining her,” he said. “I decline to declare judicially that Australian wives occupy such a repellant position of legal and moral degradation.” The judges dismissed, with costs, an appeal by Mrs Violet May Wright, against a judgment of the State Full Court, in favour of Miss Ellen Cedzich, in an action in which Mrs Wright claimed £SOOO damages from Miss Cedzich, for having allegedly enticed her husband away from her. Neither the State Full Court nor the High Court investigated the truth cr otherwise of Mrs Wright’s allegation. They had merely to decide whether Mrs Wright nas entitled to sue. In October, 1928, Mr Justice Lowe referred the case to the State Full Court, on an application by Miss Cedzich that the statement of claim be struck out on the grounds that it disclosed no cause of action and that tho actio nwas frivolous and vexatious. The Full Court entered judgment for Miss Cedzich in the action, and ordered Mrs Wright to pay Mi6S Cedzich’s costs. Mrs Wright appealed to the F.uil High Court on the ground that the judgment of the State Full Court was wrong in law. RIGHT OF WIFE. The Chief Justice (Sir Adrian Knox) and Justice Sir Frank Gavan Duffy said that the contention of Mrs Wright’s counsel that the existence of this right of action in a wife was a necessary deduction from the admitted right of action which a husband had for the loss of the fellowship of his wife, was sufficiently answered by the observation of Lord Wensleydale. He had said that the right of the husband in this respect was entirely different in character from the right of the wife in respect of her husband. The right of the husband was of material value, capable of being estimated in money, while the right of the wife was no more than .a right to the comfort of the husband’s society and attention. Mr Justice Rich said that, subject to certain exceptions, he knew of no instance in the history of English law in which a wife had maintained an action for the loss of her husband's fellowship. In America, where in most jurisdictions the action had been established as a result of legislation, it was generally allowed that the action did not lie at common law. SHOCK TO CONSCIENCE. Mr Justice Isaacs said: ‘‘Either the status of a wife imposes upon her a dependent lifelong servitude as a menial in her husband’s house, terminable only by legal separation or death, or else it leaves her with the independent right, now unimpeded by obstacles or procedure, to protect herself from the wrongful deprivation cf her honourable rights as a wife. I cannot hesitate an instant as to the proper choice._ ■ ‘‘Nothing more was needed in modern circumstances to effectuate the wife’s remedy, and to place her in that respect on a level with her husband, than our improved procedural law, which has removed ancient disabilities

standing in the way of asserting her rights. Those fundamental rights, so far as relevant to this case, have never changed, because they are basically entrenched in. the very conception of marriage.”