Estates of Perry v. Hill

Hubert M. Perry and Ruth L. Jones-Perry, a married couple, were involved in a head-on collision and died at the scene. They had no children together, but Jones-Perry had three children from a prior marriage, and Perry had other heirs. At trial, witness Jerad Kirkes testified that upon finding the accident, he found Jones-Perry’s pulse and saw her breathing. Kirkes and Ryan Patrick Stroud then moved Perry, who was gasping for breath, away from the car. Kirkes checked Jones-Perry’s pulse again and found it, but she was no longer breathing. Kirkes stated that although people were performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Perry at that time, he believed that Perry was already dead. He checked Jones-Perry’s pulse again but could not find it. Kirkes believed that Jones-Perry had survived Perry by three to six minutes. Kirkes acknowledged that he never checked Perry’s pulse. Stroud testified to substantially similar facts and believed that Jones-Perry had survived Perry by at least a minute. The spouses’ death certificates stated the time of death for both as 11:15 p.m. James Fred Hill (defendant), Perry’s estate’s representative, argued that the testimony did not meet the requirements of the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) for establishing when a person was dead. Rich D. Jones (plaintiff), Jones-Perry’s estate’s representative, sought a determination that Jones-Perry survived Perry and that the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act (USDA) did not apply. The trial court concluded that Jones-Perry survived Perry and determined the heirs. Hill appealed, claiming that the trial court erred in finding that Jones had to prove that Perry predeceased Jones-Perry by a preponderance of the evidence rather than clear and convincing evidence and that there was insufficient evidence to find that the spouses died otherwise than simultaneously.