Gaines v. Poindexter, Civ. A. No. 6176.

• Decision Date: 08 October 1957
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 6176.
• Citation: 155 F. Supp. 638
• Parties: F.C. GAINES, Jr., v. R. Downs POINDEXTER.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Louisiana

155 F. Supp. 638

F.C. GAINES, Jr., v. R. Downs POINDEXTER.

Civ. A. No. 6176.

United States District Court W. D. Louisiana, Shreveport Division.

October 8, 1957.

John M. Hamilton, Witts, Geary, Hamilton & Brice, Dallas, Tex., J. Edwin Bailey, Jr., Shreveport, La., for plaintiff.

Sidney M. Cook, Charles D. Egan, Benjamin C. King and Cook, Clark, Egan, Yancey & King, Shreveport, La., for defendant.

BENJAMIN C. DAWKINS, Jr., Chief Judge.

F. C. Gaines, Jr., here sues R. Downs Poindexter for $1,450,000 in damages. The claim results from defendant's having allegedly alienated the affections of plaintiff's wife.

Jurisdiction is based solely on the Diversity Statute, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332, plaintiff being a resident citizen of Dallas, Texas, and defendant of Shreveport, Louisiana.

The complaint sets forth a sordid story: Plaintiff was married to Miriam Janis on June 11, 1944, at Dallas, where they and their three children, born of the marriage, lived together happily until July, 1956. At that time plaintiff introduced defendant, a business friend, to his wife. Almost immediately, it is alleged, defendant launched a campaign to steal Mrs. Gaines' affections. Using his wealth, and displaying a glamorous background of expensive clothes, luxurious cars and a private airplane, defendant is said to have showered the wife with valuable gifts and other attentions which completely turned her head, caused her to abandon all devotion to her family, and to engage in clandestine trysts at a secret apartment maintained by defendant for that purpose. As the end result, it is averred that the marriage has been ruined, the family destroyed, and motherhood profaned, all because of defendant's calculated and perfidious course of conduct.

For this, apparently not being averse to advertising the facts he alleges, plaintiff claims the large amount of damages we have mentioned. He evidently feels that, in some manner or measure, money will make him and his family whole again.

Through counsel, defendant has moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to allege a claim upon which relief can be granted. The points of the motion are that the law of Louisiana reprobates actions for damages because of alleged alienation of affections, they being abhorrent to the public policy of the State; that in a case like this, where jurisdiction depends entirely upon diversity of citizenship between the parties, this Court sits, and should act, exactly as would a Court of the State; that while this claim arises under the law of Texas, which sanctions such suits, and while the rule of comity ordinarily requires the Courts of the State where suit is filed to recognize and enforce the law of another State from which a transitory cause of action arises, such recognition and enforcement will not be granted where the law of the foreign State is repugnant to the established public policy of the forum; hence, since a Louisiana State Court would dismiss the action, this Court also should do so.

For his part, in opposition to the motion, plaintiff urges that this Court judicially must recognize the law of Texas, where his cause of action arose, and must enforce it, since it is a transitory claim enforceable in the State of defendant's residence; that all requirements for the exercise of valid jurisdiction are present; and that, therefore, the motion should be denied.

Resolution of these legal issues will require analysis of 1) the Louisiana law on the subject of alienation of affections, 2) the extent to which such law establishes a rule of State public policy, 3) the practical effect of such policy, and 4) the Louisiana conflict of laws rules applicable to this case.

The first and only alienation of affections litigation in the history of Louisiana is Moulin v. Monteleone, 165 La. 169, 115 So. 447, 456, decided by the State Supreme Court in 1928. There, in the face of factual allegations remarkably similar to those alleged here, the Court dismissed that suit on an exception of no cause or right of action. Its unanimous opinion, authored by Chief Justice O'Niell, in an exhaustive, scholarly discourse, covered every phase of applicable Louisiana law, and concluded that such an action may not be maintained in this State, for these principal reasons:

1. The type of damages sought in such cases is essentially punitive or exemplary. Louisiana law denies recovery of such damages.

2. "The law considers marriage in no other view than as a civil contract", LSA-Civil Code Article 86; and in this State there is no right of action for damages ex delicto against one who induces another to violate his or her contract with a third person.

3. Under Louisiana's general civil law, in the absence of a statute or codal article expressly granting the right, there can be no recovery for loss of services, support, companionship, or affections of a human being, the enjoyment of which is not a property right.

4. An action for alienation of affections is not provided for, expressly or impliedly, by LSA-Civil Code Article 2315, which serves as the general basis of Louisiana tort law.

5. Since the Louisiana Civil Code contains no positive law granting a right of action for alienation of affections, the Court would look to natural law and reason, and received usages, which in this case required a holding that the plaintiff could not recover.

In its concluding paragraph, the decision pointed directly to the core, the raison d'etre, of the State's public policy on this subject:

"The best way to suppress such conduct as is described in the plaintiff's petition would be by means of a penal statute condemning both of the particeps criminis. A law that would allow the husband compensation in money for such a wrong would be revolting to a majority of men, and might tend more to encourage blackmail than to protect the home. It is not astonishing that the Civil Code makes no provision for such a right of action." (Emphasis supplied.)

Nearly thirty years have passed since that decision was rendered by the State's highest Court. No further cases of that nature have been filed. The Legislature has met dozens of times in the interim, and, by way of tacit endorsement, not only has not taken even a first step toward modifying or revoking the rule; so far as we know, or have been advised, there never has been any effort from any quarter to effect a change. The decision has been universally recognized and applauded in Louisiana for what it is—a sound and basic tenet of State public policy. Among others, leading legal scholars of our State Law Colleges have added their approval.

Dr. Dale E. Bennett, Professor of Law at Louisiana State University, at 1 Louisiana Law Review 665, 672, made the following statement:

"Louisiana jurisprudence is fortunately free from such cases. In the landmark case of Moulin v. Monteleone, Chief Justice O'Niell, in a scholarly and forceful opinion, held that Louisiana has never recognized a cause of action for alienation of affections. Other courts have recognized the evil, and eight states have recently enacted statutes abolishing the common law cause of action for alienation of affections.

* * * * * *

"In Miller v. Levine, 1931, 130 Me. 153, 154 A. 174, 178 the court declares, `such suits furnish a most convenient weapon for extortion and the right to bring them is a constant temptation to the unscrupulous.'

* * * * * *

"The social policy underlying this decision is exemplified in the Chief Justice's conclusion, `A law that would allow the husband compensation in money for such a wrong would be revolting to a majority of men, and might tend more to encourage blackmail than to protect the home.'" (Emphasis supplied.)

Professor Ferdinand Fairfax Stone, of the College of Law, Tulane University, in a comment at 17 Tulane Law Review 159, 160, made the following statements:

"Thus, to offer an example, when Chief Justice O'Niell decided in the case of Moulin v. Monteleone that Louisiana would not recognize an action for damages for alienation of affections, he was determining in a sense that the considered attitude of this community as represented in its laws and the experience of the years did not favor the granting of damages as redress in such instances.

* * * * * *

"Even in recent times, Chief Justice O'Niell in referring to Moulin v. Monteleone, a suit for alienation of affections, stated that in his view the plaintiff had not lost anything, but had merely learned something."

Dr. Harriet S. Daggett, Professor of Law, Louisiana State University, in her work entitled The Community Property System of Louisiana, at page 216, stated:

"The budding of a line of alienation of affection suits was promptly and effectively nipped in the case of Moulin v. Monteleone, where in another renowed opinion, Chief Justice O'Niell denied the compatibility of real affection with a salve of money damages. The whole relationship of husband and wife was raised to a higher level by his words. The contrast to the common law is most strikingly brought out in the opinion and is most gratifying to the group of individuals who had been branded by Blackstone as `the inferior' and for whom no legal relief was available when the affections of a spouse had been alienated."

Moreover, it is a matter of common knowledge, properly subject to judicial notice, that the Bench and Bar of Louisiana agree with the soundness of Moulin v. Monteleone, especially with its finding that the sanctioning of such litigation "* * * might tend more to encourage blackmail than to protect the home."

Other States, throughout all parts of the nation, have taken the same realistic view. New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, California, Maine, New Jersey, Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, by special statutes, have outlawed their old rules permitting recovery of damages for alienation of affections. See, e. g., Kolkey v. Grossinger, 5 Cir., 195 F.2d 525. That Louisiana has not done so by express legislative...