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Davila v. Nickell10/26/2005
the decedent's successor in interest." (Code Civ. Proc., § 377.30; Garofalo v. Princess Cruises, Inc. (2000) 85 Cal.App.4th 1060, 1072.) A wrongful death action, in contrast, is asserted by certain statutorily defined individuals on their own behalf and is intended to compensate them for the losses they have sustained as a result of the death, such as loss of financial support and society. (Ibid.) The Legislature has provided that a wrongful death plaintiff is not entitled to recover punitive damages for these losses regardless of the reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct. (Code Civ. Proc., § 377.61; see Tarasoff, supra, 17 Cal.3d at p. 450; Ford Motor Co. v. Superior Court, supra, 120 Cal.App.3d at p. 751.)
In the complaint, the Davila parents alleged they were bringing a wrongful death action and that they were bringing the action as Davila's "surviving heirs," seeking " amages incident to the survival action of decedent, . . . who would have been the plaintiff had he lived." Although the jury was not given any survival action instructions, nor asked to identify the damages attributable to the decedent's estate, viewing the record in the light most favorable to plaintiffs as we must, the record is sufficient to support that the jury awarded the Davila parents' compensatory damages on these survival allegations, in addition to damages for their own losses. Given the Davila parents' specific allegations that they were Davila's statutory heirs and were bringing a statutory survival action, and the defendants' complete failure to refute these assertions or to object to the legal basis for the punitive damages award at trial or initially on appeal, we conclude the record supports the legal basis for the punitive damages award to the Davila parents.
This conclusion, however, does not apply to the Davila children. The Davila children never alleged they were bringing a survival action and sought damages at trial only on a wrongful death theory. Additionally, the Davila children, who are the children of Davila's girlfriend, have not established a basis for standing to assert a survival claim. A survival action may be brought only by "the decedent's personal representative or, if none, by the decedent's successor in interest." (Code Civ. Proc., § 377.30; see also Code Civ. Proc., § 377.11.) Code of Civil Procedure section 377.11 defines a "'decedent's successor in interest'" to mean "the beneficiary of the decedent's estate or other successor in interest who succeeds to a cause of action . . . ." The Davila children concede they were not beneficiaries of Davila's estate or personal representatives, but argue they fell within the definition of an "other successor in interest" because they had standing under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60, subdivision (c) to bring the wrongful death cause of action.
This circular argument is legally unsupported. Code of Civil Procedure section 377.11 provides standing to bring a survival action to a party "who succeeds to a cause of action," i.e., a person who becomes an owner of the deceased's property that is the subject of the litigation. (Code Civ. Proc., § 377.11, italics added; see Parsons v. Tickner (1995) 31 Cal.App.4th 1513, 1523-1524.) A wrongful death plaintiff does not "succeed" to the wrongful death cause of action because this claim is brought on his or her own behalf to compensate for his or her own losses. A conclusion that every wrongful death plaintiff is also entitled to bring a survival action would undermine the purpose of the survival statutes-to permit recovery by a decedent's estate (or other proper representative of the decedent) for all damages suffered by the decedent while he or she was still living.
Moreo
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