Ouellette v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.

OP ALA, Justice.

The dispositive issue on certiorari is whether the risk carrier of UM 1 coverage must answer in damages for the “grief and loss of companionship” of its insureds, occasioned by the wrongful death of their emancipated, adult son, even though in the distribution stage of an earlier wrongful-death action (by the decedent’s surviving spouse) the plaintiffs-parents were denied, for lack of legal interest, any part of the recovery. We answer in the negative.

I

ANATOMY OF LITIGATION

The Wrongful-Death Action

The surviving spouse — qua personal representative of the decedent’s next of kin…