Opinion: Florida's injustice on spousal death

A retired couple from Ohio were killed three years ago in a Polk County collision. Each had grown children from prior marriages. His got a modest settlement from the rental car company that owned the vehicle at fault. Her children got nothing.

The injustice owed to a Florida law providing in essence that adult children cannot sue for a parent's death when a spouse also survives. In the Polk County tragedy, Wilma Jean Stizel died at the scene of the collision. Her husband David H. Stitzel II died in a hospital four hours later. The 5th District Court of Appeal ruled last year that his brief survival had cost her children the right to damages. But Judge Winifred Sharp had this to add: ". . . Equity suggests this is an area which should be revisited at some point by the Legislature."

It wasn't the first time a Florida court had called this issue to the conscience of the Legislature. The 2nd District Court of Appeal did so nine years ago. Nothing happened.

"You learn the first day in law school that the law isn't fair," said Susan Gibson, a Winter Park lawyer for Wilma Stizel's children, "but this hits you in the face." Ohio law would have allowed their claim, she said.

That would become Florida's law as well under HB 795 by Rep. Jack Seiler, D-Wilton Manors. It provides that if spouses die in a common accident or within 30 days of each other "as a result of the same wrongful act or series of acts," each one "shall have been deemed to be predeceased by the other."

This is a reasonable bill, and the Legislature should pass it.

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