Johnson v. Pischke
| Decision Date | 22 April 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 15212,15212 |
| Citation | 700 P.2d 19,108 Idaho 397 |
| Parties | , Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 10,625 Evelyn Delma JOHNSON, individually; Brian Johnson, individually, Evelyn Delma Johnson and Brian Johnson, executors and trustees of Last Will and Testament of Donald Vernon Johnson, Deceased; Cynthia Dyer, Brenton Dyer, and Donna Johnson, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Sharon Mae PISCHKE, individually and D/B/A Norm Air Service; Sharon Mae Pischke, executrix of the estate of Norman Joseph Pischke, Deceased; and Norm Air Service, Inc., a corporation, Defendants-Respondents, and Cessna Aircraft Company, a corporation, Defendant, Cross-Claimant, Respondent. |
| Court | Idaho Supreme Court |
Richard H. Greener, Boise, Susan E. Loggans, William J. Harte, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Gerald T. Husch, Mark S. Geston, Boise, for defendants-respondents.
This appeal arises out of the following factual situation. Four residents of Estevan, Saskatchewan departed from that city on the morning of May 5, 1979. Aboard the Cessna 172 Skyhawk aircraft were Norman Pischke, pilot, fixed base flying service owner, and owner of the airplane, Brenton Dyer, student pilot, Donald Johnson, passenger, and his daughter Donna Johnson, also a passenger. Their destination was Boise, Idaho. After stops in Williston, North Dakota, and Livingston, Montana, the aircraft crashed that afternoon in the mountains of central Idaho. Mr. Pischke died after suffering a head wound and wandering away from the plane the day after the accident. Donald Johnson survived the initial impact, gave his coat to his daughter, and died of exposure the day after the crash. Donna Johnson received cuts and broken bones in her wrist and finger, while Brent Dyer suffered a broken jaw, mouth injuries, a broken shoulder and cuts. Both Ms. Johnson and Mr. Dyer also suffered frostbite and exposure. Ms. Johnson and Mr. Dyer stayed with the plane for approximately two weeks, but eventually managed to survive by walking out to civilization, arriving at the Livingston mine nineteen days after the crash.
Plaintiffs brought the following actions: Don Johnson's wife Evelyn, son Brian, and daughters, Donna and Cynthia Dyer, brought wrongful death claims against the defendants, Pischke survivors and Cessna Aircraft Company; Dyer and Donna Johnson sought recovery against defendants for personal injuries; and Cynthia Dyer brought claims against defendants for loss of consortium. Plaintiffs also brought strict liability and lack of crashworthiness claims against Cessna Aircraft Company. Defendants moved for summary judgment against all claims except for Donna Johnson's personal injury claims. The district court ruled that: (1) Brent and Cynthia Dyers' personal injury claims were barred by Saskatchewan Worker's Compensation Law; (2) Johnsons' wrongful death claims against Pischkes and Cessna were barred by the Saskatchewan wrongful death statute's one-year limitation on actions, (3) Brent Dyer's and Donna Johnson's claim against Cessna for lack of "crashworthiness" of the aircraft was dismissed; and (4) Idaho law would govern Brent Dyer's and Donna Johnson's claim in strict liability against Cessna, though Saskatchewan law does not recognize strict liability, but only claims based on common law negligence. Trial court rulings (1), (2) and (3) are before us on appeal, the first two requiring a determination of whether Saskatchewan or Idaho law is applicable and the third raising a question of whether there is any evidence in the record to sustain a cause of action against Cessna for lack of crashworthiness of the aircraft.
We address these issues in turn.
Appellants have asserted that I.C. § 21-207 1 requires application of Idaho law to all claims. We find their arguments to be without merit. We agree with the trial court that:
The purpose of the provision seems most likely to have been an attempt to assure that this state would have jurisdiction to punish wrongdoing where no other state did due to the fact that the crime or tort was not committed within the territorial boundaries of any other jurisdiction.
The statute does not require application of Idaho substantive law to the rights and obligations of the parties in the instant case.
The trial court concluded that in the absence of a statutory choice of law directive, a choice of law analysis was necessary. The court focused its analysis on the Restatement (2d) of Conflict of Laws "most significant contacts" test, adopted by this Court for contract cases in Rungee v. Allied Van Lines, Inc., 92 Idaho 718, 449 P.2d 378 (1968) and for tort cases by the Idaho Court of Appeals in DeMeyer v. Maxwell, 103 Idaho 327, 647 P.2d 783 (Ct.App.1982). The Restatement involves consideration of enumerated factors or principles and significant contacts. The listed principles are:
(f) certainty, predictability and uniformity of result, and
(g) ease in the determination and application of the law to be applied. Restatement (2d) of Conflict of Laws Section 6.
Section 145 adds to the Section 6 considerations cited above:
(1) The rights and liabilities of the parties with respect to an issue in tort are determined by the local law of the state which, with respect to that issue, has the most significant relationship to the occurrence and the parties under the principles stated in Section 6.
(2) Contacts to be taken into account in applying the principles of Section 6 to determine the law applicable to an issue include:
(c) the domicile, residence, nationality, place of incorporation and place of business of the parties, and
(d) the place where the relationship, if any, between the parties is centered.
These contacts are to be evaluated according to their relative importance with respect to the particular issue.
Some commentary is appropriate concerning the manner in which the Restatement principles are applied and analyzed. Professor Weintraub discusses the Restatement approach in his treatise on conflicts of law:
Whether or not a particular contact with a state is significant for conflicts purposes cannot be known until one first knows exactly what domestic tort rules are in conflict and what the policies underlying those rules are. Only then can one intelligently "evaluate" rather than mechanically count the contacts. A dozen contacts with an occurrence may fail to give a state any interest in having its rule applied to determine consequences of that occurrence. One contact may make the policies underlying a state's rule directly and rationally applicable to the case being decided. Once each of two states has a contact with an occurrence such that each state has an interest in having a different rule applied to determine controversies flowing from that occurrence, there is a real conflict that should be resolved rationally and not by counting contacts. Weintraub, Commentary on the Conflict of Laws, § 6.8 pp. 277-78 (1980).
The trial court correctly noted that differing policies and interests may make the law of one jurisdiction appropriate for the resolution of some issues, and the law of another interested jurisdiction the most rational choice for resolving other issues in the same case.
It is undisputed that Brenton Dyer was employed by Dyer Ford, which paid for his flying lessons and gave him time off to practice flying and take lessons. Dyer was receiving formal cross-country instruction on the subject flight and was piloting the aircraft until shortly before the crash. Dyer therefore filed a claim for, and received worker's compensation benefits from the Saskatchewan Worker's Compensation Board.
The Saskatchewan Worker's Compensation Act differs from Idaho's in that it insulates from third party tort liability not only the immediate employer of the injured employee, but all employers who make payments into the fund. The Act provides that employees injured outside of Saskatchewan must elect whether to seek relief under the laws of the place of the injury, or to seek compensation under the province's compensation program.
The trial court found that defendant Pischke was reporting to the Board of Worker's Compensation, did pay assessments on behalf of the flying operations for his employees, and did elect to cover himself during the time in question.
We agree with the trial court's conclusion that:
The province of Saskatchewan has significant interest in controlling the rights of injured employees to be compensated for their work related injuries and in allocating the resulting costs among the various employers who are believed to bear the responsibility for those injuries. The Pischke Defendants could have justifiably assumed that their payments into the compensation fund would immunize them from such liability. Saskatchewan's policy of insulating all covered employers from civil liability if they pay into and participate in its worker compensation program would be subverted by the application of Idaho law to this controversy.
Appellants contend that ambiguities in the Worker's Compensation Act raise a question as to whether Pischke was actually covered, and what the legal status of the act itself was at the time of the accident. Despite any "ambiguity" concerning the legal status of the regulations under the Saskatchewan Worker's Compensation Act, the fact remains that Dyer elected to proceed under and accept the benefits of the act. Since the Worker's Compensation Board has exclusive jurisdiction under the 1978 act to determine whether...
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