Balts v. Balts

Decision Date01 April 1966
Docket NumberNo. 39709,39709
PartiesCarrie BALTS, Respondent, v. Emery BALTS, Appellant. Gertrude E. TOTH, Defendant and Third-Party Plaintiff, Respondent, v. MINNESOTA MINING AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY, Third-Party Defendant, Respondent.
CourtMinnesota Supreme Court

Syllabus by the Court

1. Unless there are unusual circumstances which result in the state of the tort or the forum state's having an overriding interest in particular litigation, the law of the state where the parties were domiciled at the time of the event shall determine whether immunity is a valid defense to tort claims litigated in Minnesota by a parent against a child.

2. Except as to the case at hand, the defense of immunity shall continue to apply to all torts heretofore committed by a child against a parent. However, such immunity shall no longer be a valid defense to actions brought for torts committed from and after this date.

Moonan & Moonan,, and Patrick W. Fitzgerald, Minneapolis, for appellant.

Vennum, Newhall, Ackman & Goetz, Minneapolis, for Balts.

Meagher, Geer, Markham & Anderson, Minneapolis, for Toth.

Mahoney & Mahoney, Minneapolis, for Minn. Mining.

OTIS, Justice.

This action is brought by a parent against a child for injuries sustained in a Wisconsin accident. The issues are: (1) The law of what state governs the question of tort immunity? (2) Will such an action lie in Minnesota?

At the time of the accident, on August 23, 1958, plaintiff, Carrie Balts, and her son, then a minor, were members of the same household domiciled in Minnesota. When action against the son was commenced in 1963, he was emancipated. Plaintiff moved to strike from the answer the defense of tort immunity, and defendant countered with a motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff's motion was granted and defendant's denied. Defendant appeals from this order, the questions determined therein having been certified by the trial court as important and doubtful. 1

1. At the outset it is conceded that in Wisconsin at the time of the accident a parent could not assert a tort claim against an unemancipated child. 2

Minnesota has never squarely passed on the question but has assumed, without actually deciding, that the matter is governed by the law of the jurisdiction in which the tort occurs unless some overriding local policy makes the application of foreign law unacceptable to our courts. Kyle v. Kyle, 210 Minn. 204, 297 N.W. 744. Thus, we have applied various foreign guest statutes to bar recovery to parties plaintiff in Minnesota courts without apparent challenge on the part of claimants. 3

The Restatement of Conflict of Laws, § 378, now in the process of revision, states:

'The law of the place of wrong determines whether a person has sustained a legal injury.'

In a decision which has been widely cited as a departure from the Restatement rule, Schmidt v. Driscoll Hotel, Inc., 249 Minn. 376, 82 N.W.2d 365, we held a Minnesota dramshop proprietor liable for an injury sustained in Wisconsin. The Restatement rule was expressly rejected with the observation that since the parties were all Minnesota residents the application of Minnesota law afforded citizens of this state the protection which the statute intended they enjoy. Influenced, apparently, by the views of a number of distinguished commentators, 4 several jurisdictions have recently refused to apply the rule that capacity to sue and immunity from suit are necessarily to be determined by the law of the state where the tort occurs.

Opinions which have considered the matter have adopted the following reasoning:

(a) Stare decisis has little significance with respect to unintentional torts where the wrongdoer's conduct is not planned. There is no conscious reliance on existing rules of immunity exept as they affect coverage afforded by liability insurance.

(b) By favoring the revision proposed by Restatement, Conflict of Laws, Tentative Draft No. 9, infra, courts move in the direction of uniformity which the Restatement is designed to achieve, thereby minimizing the likelihood of 'forum shopping.'

(c) The argument that the rights of the parties are vested by the law of the state of the tort is not persuasive. It is clear that if a tort has been committed a claim arises and it is only the remedy which is barred by application of the intrafamily-immunity doctrine.

What has proved to be a landmark decision is Emery v. Emery, 45 Cal.2d 421, 289 P.2d 218. There unemancipated children and their mother sought to recover damages in California against the father and an unemancipated brother for injuries resulting from an Idaho accident. The court had before it the question of what law governed intrafamily immunity--that of the state of injury, the forum state, or the domicile state. The problem was found to be one of family law rather than tort law. The place of injury was treated as fortuitous and irrelevant. The court held (45 Cal.2d 428, 289 P.2d 222):

'* * * Although tort actions between members of the same family will ordinarily be brought in the state of the family domicile, the courts of another state will in some cases be a more convenient forum, and thus the question arises whether the choice of law rule should be expressed in terms of the law of the forum or that of the domicile. We think that disabilities to sue and immunities from suit because of a family relationship are more properly determined by reference to the law of the state of the family domicile. That state has the primary responsibility for establishing and regulating the incidents of the family relationship and it is the only state in which the parties can, by participation in the legislative processes, effect a change in those incidents. Moreover, it is undesirable that the rights, duties, disabilities, and immunities conferred or imposed by the family relationship should constantly change as members of the family cross state boundaries during temporary absences from their home. Since all of the parties to the present case are apparently domiciliaries of California, we must look to the law of this state to determine whether any disabilities or immunities exist.'

Other jurisdictions have followed California in applying the law of the parties' domicile to multistate tort situations. Out of these cases has emerged, explicitly or implicitly, the acceptance of Restatement, Conflict of Laws, Tentative Draft No. 9, § 390g, by courts in New Jersey, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Iowa. 5 We are persuaded that the proposed rule should govern our decision in this litigation. As presently drafted, it provides:

'In accordance with the rule of § 379, wheher one member of a family is immune from tort liability to another member of the family is determined by the local law of the state of their domicil.' 6

Reverting to the facts of the instant case, the owner, driver, and injured passenger were all members of the same family, living together in the same household in the State of Minnesota at the time of the occurrence. It is Minnesota from which the excursion into Wisconsin originated and to which the parties were presumably to return. The vehicle was apparently registered, insured, and garaged in Minnesota. Whatever economic impact the litigation has on the parties affects a Minnesota family and a Minnesota insurer. The State of Wisconsin, on the other hand, is concerned only with enforcing its traffic laws and making its highways safe for public travel. To that end it can be argued that traffic safety in Wisconsin will be promoted rather than subverted by imposing civil liability on one who is found to be negligent in the operation of his vehicle on a Wisconsin highway.

In this day of jet planes and high-speed transportation on interstate highways, a traveler's contact with the state of the tort is ordinarily quite casual compared to the substantial and enduring interest of the domiciliary state. 7 We therefore agree that this becomes a matter of family law rather than tort law and that Minnesota is free to establish its own policy of immunity without being bound by that of Wisconsin.

Courts and commentators have weighed the respective interests of the forum, the domicile, and the state of the tort by reference to where the center of gravity lies, or wherer the contacts are the most significant, substantial, intimate, compelling, or predominant. While we favor this approach, we recognize that the adoption of a rule which utilizes such variables results in less certainty and predictability than the long-standign rule which consistently applied the law of the state of the tort. Nevertheless, where the only question is one of intrafamily immunity, we believe uniformity and certainty can best be achieved by applying the law of the state where the parties were domiciled at the time of the event, except in those rare cases where unusual factors suggest the efficacy of applying the law of a different state.

We find support for our conclusion in a recent Pennsylvania case, McSwain v. McSwain, 420 Pa. 86, 215 A.2d 677. There the forum state where the parties were domiciled refused to adopt the law of the state where the tort occurred, and, in applying the rule of husband-wife immunity which prevailed in Pennsylvania, stated (420 Pa. 93, 215 A.2d 681):

'* * * Time found the rule (of lex loci delecti) increasingly criticized as a mechanical methodology, predicated on the out-moded 'vested right' theory, and emphasizing certainty and predictability at the expense of other, frequently more relevant considerations.

'* * * What should be sought is an analysis of the extent to which one state rather than another has demonstrated, by reason of its policies and their connection and relevance to the matter in dispute, a priority of interest in the application of its rule of law.

'Our conclusion to look to the law of Pennsylvania on the issue of intramarital immunity rests, not upon a...

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