## Facts

- A passenger was injured while being transported by Jacksonville Street Railway Company, a common carrier of passengers.
- The passenger later died.
- The passenger’s administratrix sued the railway company seeking damages for the passenger’s personal injuries, alleging negligence in the course of carriage.
- The pleading framed the claim as a tort action based on breach of the carrier’s duty to transport passengers safely.
- The trial court entered judgment for the administratrix.
- The railway company appealed, asserting the claim did not survive the passenger’s death under Florida law.

## Issues

1. Whether a negligence action seeking damages for a passenger’s personal injuries against a common carrier survives the passenger’s death so that the personal representative may maintain it.
2. Whether the claim, as pleaded, is properly classified as ex delicto (breach of public duty) or ex contractu (breach of a contract of safe carriage), and how that classification controls survival.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court reversed the judgment for the administratrix.
- The court held that, under the common-law rule and Florida’s survival statute, a personal-injury action pleaded in tort abates upon the death of the injured party and cannot be maintained by the personal representative.
- The declaration was treated as an ex delicto action for breach of the carrier’s public duty, not an ex contractu action for breach of an agreement to carry safely; therefore, it did not survive.

## Legal Principles

- At common law, “merely personal” tort actions for injuries to the person die with the person; they are not maintainable by or against personal representatives absent statutory authorization.
- Florida’s survival statute preserved the common-law distinction between actions that survive and those that abate; it did not extend survival to tort claims for personal injuries.
- Survival depends on the legal nature and form of the action as pleaded: if the cause of action is necessarily ex delicto, it abates; if it can be maintained in form ex contractu, it may survive.
- In passenger-carrier cases, the same occurrence may support either a tort theory (breach of public duty) or a contract theory (breach of an agreement of safe carriage), but a personal representative cannot avoid abatement by recharacterizing a tort declaration as contract after the injured party’s death.

## Conclusion

Because the administratrix pleaded a tort claim for the decedent’s personal injuries based on breach of the carrier’s public duty, the cause of action abated upon the passenger’s death and did not survive under Florida law, requiring reversal of the plaintiff’s judgment.


Jacksonville St. Ry. Co. v. Chappell, 1 So. 10 (Fla. 1886)