DISTRICT COURT FOR THE CANAL ZONE.

dies intestate, leaving no widow or issue; that plaintiffs are his only heirs, and that they were dependent on him for support; and that he always did support them; and that they are now destitute.
A demurrer was filed to the complaint, as there was in the Borrero case, on the ground that plaintiffs had no right to sue or maintain an action; but between the dates in the decision in the Borrero case and the Torres case, there had been adopted an amended Civil Code of Porto Rico, and the defendant urged that if the correct rule was announced in the Borrero case that it was otherwise under the present law, but the Court in rendering his opinion held that article 1803 of the amended code was the same as article 1902, of the original Civil Code, and the Court further stated that there had been no such change of the local law as to render inapplicable the construction given by the Supreme Court of Spain to the existing civil law applicable to Porto Rico, and which law, with certain qualifications unnecessary to enumerate, had been continued in force by the act of Congress of April 12, 1900.
Again, in the United States District Court in and for Porto Rico, the Hon. Bernard S. Rodey, District judge, a decision was rendered December 3, 1908, in the case of Belen Requena de Molina vs., San Juan Light & Transit Company (Porto Rico Federal Reports, Vol. IV, pp. 356-361); this was an action filed under section 1803 of the Civil Code of Porto Rico of the year 1902, which reads ': "A person who, by an act of omission, causes damage to another when there is fault or negligence, shall be obliged to repair the damage so done." The court said: "This is a plain action for damages, brought by the plaintiff as the widow of her late husband, Francisco Molina, who, she alleges, met his death (on the night of the first or the morning of the second of April, 1908), through the negligence of the defendant." The decedent's death was brought about by an electric shock received while he was in a dining room in the city of San Juan, and in *this case the court sustained a verdict for the plaintiff in the sum of $17,500. This case was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, and reported in 224 U. S., pp. 680-681, the Supreme Court affirming the decision of the U. S. District Court of Porto Rico.
If the plaintiffs herein, or either of them, have a right of action, it must rest upon article 2341 of the Civil Code of Pan 'ama, which reads as follows: "He who shall have been guilty of an offense or fault which has caused another damage, is obliged to repair it, without prejudice to the principal penalty which the law imposes for the fault or offense committed."
Were it not for the fact that the courts in Spanish countries in construing this statute or statutes almost identical with it, have held that such recoveries as these in question could be had, it would seem to me