Caraway v. Burns

THE COURT.

By complaint filed April 30, 1954, appellant instituted a personal injury action based on facts allegedly occurring on June 18, 1948. She appeals on an agreed statement from a summary judgment in favor of defendants based on their contention that the action was barred by the one-year statute of limitations. (Code Civ. Proc., § 340, subd. 3.) Appellant contends that the statute had been tolled under Code of Civil Procedure section 352, subdivision 1 until May 1, 1953, her 21st birthday. Defendants’ position was that plaintiff reached her majority on February 10, 1951, when she married having reached the age of 18 years. (Civ. Code, § 25.) In this, the only point in controversy, the position of defendants must be sustained.

The point was decided against plaintiff’s contention in

Haro

v.

Southern Pac. Co.

(1936), 17 Cal.App.2d 594 [62 P.2d 441], a wrongful death action by a widow, 19 years old when her husband died, instituted more than one year after his death but before she reached the age of 21. The court

[329]

held that the phrase “transaction respecting property” in Civil Code section 25 includes the bringing of an action for wrongful death, that she therefore was under no disability preventing her to bring the action at any time during the year following his death and that at the end of that year the action was barred by the statute (p. 597). The Supreme Court denied a hearing. Appellant’s attacks on this decision and her contention that it has lost authority because of an amendment made in 1953 in section 25,

supra,

are without merit.

Appellant urges that the court in the Haro case failed to construe section 25 in accordance with the legislative intent which according to appellant was to give the married woman between 18 and 21 an adult status for certain transactions only, to be construed strictly as exceptions, and otherwise to maintain her protection as an inexperienced juvenile. No such intention appears from section 25 or from related code sections. The contrary intention is indicated by the provision of section 25 that the 18-year-old married woman shall “be of the age of majority” and by Probate Code, section 1590, subdivision 1, which provides: “Where the appointment of a guardian was made solely because of the ward’s minority, the marriage of a minor ward terminates the guardianship of the