Cousins v. Instrument Flyers, Inc.
| Decision Date | 29 March 1978 |
| Citation | 376 N.E.2d 914,44 N.Y.2d 698,405 N.Y.S.2d 441 |
| Parties | , 376 N.E.2d 914 Norman L. COUSINS, Appellant, v. INSTRUMENT FLYERS, INC., et al., Respondents. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
The order should be affirmed, with costs.
In this action, based on strict products liability, for personal injuries resulting from the crash of a rented private airplane, the issue is whether, as the parties had assumed throughout the trial, contributory negligence is a bar to recovery. Under the then applicable New York law, contributory negligence would be a bar; under the law of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, it evidently would not be.
Plaintiff, a resident of New York, arranged in New York to rent an airplane from defendant Instrument Flyers, Inc., a closely held New Jersey corporation, whose president lives and works in New York. The plane, which had been manufactured in Florida by defendant Piper Aircraft, a Pennsylvania corporation, was kept in a hangar and maintained at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. On the day of the accident, plaintiff flew the plane from nearby Teterboro Airport to New York, where he made a stop at Flushing Airport, and then another at Westchester County Airport, where he picked up a passenger for the trip to Michigan. A stopover was scheduled in Ohio. Plaintiff's apparent contributory negligence probably began while he was in New York and continued until the crash in Pennsylvania.
Isolation and analysis of the factors connecting the accident and its causes with the various States does not resolve the choice of law problem. It is true that lex loci delicti remains the general rule in tort cases to be displaced only in extraordinary circumstances (see Neumeier v. Kuehner, 31 N.Y.2d 121, 128-129, 335 N.Y.S.2d 64, 69-70, 286 N.E.2d 454, 457-458 (Fuld, Ch. J.), 131 (Breitel, J., concurring)). But it has been acknowledged that in airplane crash cases, the place of the wrong, if it can even be ascertained, is most often fortuitous (Long v. Pan Amer. World Airways, 16 N.Y.2d 337, 342, esp. n. 3, 266 N.Y.S.2d 513, 516, 213 N.E.2d 796, 798; see Ehrenzweig, Conflict of Laws, p. 586; Tydings, Air Crash Litigation: A Judicial Problem and a Congressional Solution, 18 Amer.U.L.Rev. 299, 300).
Although the entire area of the...
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O'Rourke v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., s. 56
...Croft v. National Car Rental, 56 N.Y.2d 989, 439 N.E.2d 346, 453 N.Y.S.2d 631 (1982) (mem.); Cousins v. Instrument Flyers, Inc., 44 N.Y.2d 698, 376 N.E.2d 914, 405 N.Y.S.2d 441 (1978) (per curiam). Unfortunately, these have only added to the confusion. See generally R. Cramton, D. Currie & ......
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Davis v. Costa-Gavras
...by section 145 of the Restatement, in tort actions involving multistate elements. See, e.g., Cousins v. Instrument Flyers, Inc., 44 N.Y.2d 698, 405 N.Y.S.2d 441, 376 N.E.2d 914 (1978); Long v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 16 N.Y.2d 337, 266 N.Y.S.2d 513, 213 N.E.2d 796 (1965); Babcock ......
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International Paper Company v. Ouellette
...and injury in another, as is the case here, the law of the place of injury applies"); Cousins v. Instrument Flyers, Inc., 44 N.Y.2d 698, 699, 405 N.Y.S.2d 441, 442, 376 N.E.2d 914, 915 (1978) ("It is true that lex loci delicti remains the general rule in tort cases to be displaced only in e......
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Gregory v. Garrett Corp.
...resort to this "governmental interest" test may have been modified to some extent in Cousins v. Instrument Flyers, Inc., 44 N.Y.2d 698, 699, 376 N.E.2d 914, 915, 405 N.Y.S.2d 441, 442 (1978) ("Lex loci delicti remains the general rule in tort cases to be displaced only in extraordinary circ......