Peters v. Peters, 6874

• Decision Date: 06 October 1981
• Docket Number: No. 6874,6874
• Citation: 63 Haw. 653,634 P.2d 586
• Parties: Lilien G. PETERS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Hans A. PETERS, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

Page 586

634 P.2d 586

63 Haw. 653

Lilien G. PETERS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Hans A. PETERS, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 6874.

Supreme Court of Hawai'i.

Oct. 6, 1981.

Reconsideration Denied Oct. 20, 1981.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Legal unity of husband and wife and disabilities thrust upon a woman by marriage under the common law rendered the maintenance of tort actions between them impossible.

2. Statutes known as Married Women's Acts or Emancipation Acts were passed in all American jurisdictions commencing about 1844, and they were designed primarily to secure to a married woman a separate legal entity and a separate legal estate in her own property.

3. Chapter XI, Session Laws of 1888, established, inter alia, the right of a married woman to hold real and personal property in her own right, to make contracts as if she were sole, and to sue and be sued in the same manner as if she were sole. As a consequence, Hawaii like all other states no longer regards husband and wife as an indivisible legal unit for most purposes. But § 5 of Chapter XI also carried a proviso to the effect that the section should not be construed to authorize suits between husband and wife.

4. Since interspousal tort immunity in Hawaii and its conceptual parent, the legal unity of husband and wife, have a definite statutory origin, the rule should not be judicially abrogated without compelling reasons. Its history in Hawaii does not permit us to lightly infer it is amenable to judicial modification which would remove from its purview a negligence action arising out of an automobile accident.

5. Where aspects of a legislatively adopted public policy statement have been examined and amended by the legislature, it is improbable that an unamended aspect has been left for judicial alteration. And the proper judicial stance in this situation is deference to the legislature.

6. The State policy on interspousal suits is not devoid of rationality; the interspousal tort immunity rule may still serve a salutary purpose.

7. Where the issue is a substantive rather than a procedural one, the courts of Hawaii would not be obliged to apply the law of Hawaii if the pertinent conflict-of-laws analysis indicates that resort to the law of another state with an interest in the proceeding would best serve the interests of the states and persons involved.

8. Where the record reveals sufficient contacts with the action, as well as interests therein, on the part of both states involved, a choice of the law of either would not run afoul of the Due Process and the Full Faith and Credit Clauses of the United States Constitution.

9. The courts have not agreed on what choice-of-law rule, set of rules, or approach works best in the area of torts, and they continue to rely on a variety of theories more or less interchangeably, and in effect apply a sort of combination of them.

10. There is no basis for the adoption of lex loci delicti as the rule governing the choice of law in tort cases at this point in the growth of American Conflicts law. The preferred choice-of-law analysis is an assessment of the interests and policy factors involved with a purpose of arriving at a desirable result in each situation.

11. Since "U-Drive" vehicles leased in Hawaii cannot be driven beyond its borders, the insurance policies covering them are written with the law of Hawaii in mind. To have the law of another state govern a tort action arising from the operation of such a vehicle would be contrary to the expectations of both insurer and lessor.

12. The Hawaii Motor Vehicle Accident Reparations Law, which is basically a compulsory, no-fault insurance law, was enacted to address problems related to motor vehicle liability insurance, including costs. A judicial decision that has a result of expanding insurance coverage for non-residents, partly at the expense of residents, would be contrary to legislative policy.

Bert Sakuda, Honolulu (L. Richard Fried, Jr. and Craig K. Furusho, Honolulu, with him on the briefs; Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Haley & Kekina, Honolulu, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellant.

Roy Hughes, Honolulu (James F. Ventura and Roy T. Chikamoto, Honolulu, with him on the brief; Libkuman, Ventura, Moon & Ayabe, Honolulu, of counsel), for defendant-appellee.

Before RICHARDSON, C. J., and OGATA, MENOR, LUM and NAKAMURA, JJ.

NAKAMURA, Justice.

We are asked to review a choice-of-law decision of the Circuit Court of the First Circuit in a negligence action arising from an automobile accident that occurred on the island of Maui while Plaintiff-appellant Lilien G. Peters and her husband, Defendant-appellee Hans A. Peters, both residents of New York, were vacationing in Hawaii. As we do not deem a judicial abrogation of our interspousal tort immunity rule appropriate, and the record discloses adequate grounds for an application of Hawaii's immunity rule rather than the law of the parties' domicile permitting interspousal tort suits, we affirm the award of summary judgment to defendant-appellee.

I.

But a few facts are essential to our discussion. On April 21, 1975, a "U-Drive" vehicle being driven by Mr. Peters and in which Mrs. Peters was a passenger collided with a truck owned by the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company. Mrs. Peters who was injured in the accident chose to assert her claim for damages in the Circuit Court of the First Circuit. The sole defendant named in the complaint was Mr. Peters, and it ascribed the collision to his negligence. Upon motion of counsel for defendant-appellee, summary judgment was granted Mr. Peters on the strength of the foregoing immunity. A timely appeal to this court followed.

II.

The authority of our courts has been invoked by plaintiff-appellant to determine whether her spouse should be accountable for an alleged tort of local inception. We are nevertheless confronted by a conflict-of-laws problem due to the presence of a relevant foreign element, the abode of the parties. Whether our law or that of the domiciliary state should govern the validity of the action under the circumstances involved is a question of first impression in the annals of this court. ¹

Plaintiff-appellant contends the viability of the suit against her husband should be determined in accord with the pertinent law of their domicile. She further views interspousal tort immunity as an anachronism that should be expunged from the jurisprudence of Hawaii. We initially address the second proposition.

A.

The common law rule of interspousal tort immunity was bottomed on the legal unity of husband and wife, for the two were considered as "one person in law." ² Among the disabilities thereby thrust upon a woman by marriage was the loss of capacity to contract for herself, or to sue or be sued without joining her husband as a plaintiff or defendant. 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries * 442, * 443. The foregoing and other incidents of the marriage status under the common law rendered the maintenance of tort actions between husband and wife impossible. W. Prosser, The Law of Torts, § 122, at 859-60 (4th ed. 1971).

Changes in the American social order wrote an end to the notion of "a union of person in husband and wife." W. Blackstone, supra, at * 442. And commencing about 1844, "statutes known as Married Women's Acts, or Emancipation Acts were passed in all American jurisdictions, which were designed primarily to secure to a married woman a separate legal identity and a separate legal estate in her own property." W. Prosser, supra, at 861.

In Hawaii, the ancient but unvenerated concept of the female marriage partner's legal subjugation was adopted tardily in 1846 as part of Act 2, 1 Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III. ³ More than a decade later, while many American jurisdictions were in the process of discarding the hoary concept, the Legislative Council reiterated its adherence thereto when it adopted the Civil Code of the Hawaiian Islands of 1859. ⁴ And it was not until 1888 that a Married Women's Act was enacted in the Kingdom. Chapter XI, Session Laws of 1888, established, inter alia, the right of a married woman to hold real and personal property in her own right, to make contracts as if she were sole, and to sue and be sued in the same manner as if she were sole. ⁵ As a consequence, Hawaii like all other states no longer regards husband and wife as an indivisible legal unit for most purposes. ⁶ First National Bank of Hawaii v. Gaines, 16 Haw. 731, 733 (1905). But § 5 of Chapter XI, which granted married women the right to sue in their own names, also carried a proviso reading:

(B)ut this section shall not be construed to authorize suits between husband and wife.

The language of § 5 with the foregoing limitation remains intact and is presently codified as HRS § 573-5. Since interspousal tort immunity in Hawaii and its conceptual parent, the legal unity of husband and wife, have a definite statutory provenance, ⁷ the rule is not for judicial discard without compelling reasons.

Deeming the constraint on interspousal actions "a matter of common law," however, plaintiff-appellant urges us to emulate the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in construing the pertinent statutory provision. In Lewis v. Lewis, 370 Mass. 619, 351 N.E.2d 526 (1976), the court found that interspousal tort immunity had not acquired statutory dimension with the passage of a statute substantially similar to § 573-5 in text. ⁸ It concluded the rule nonetheless remained "in its common law status susceptible to reexamination and alteration by ... (the) court," 370 Mass. at 627-28, 351 N.E.2d at 531, and fashioned a new rule of interspousal tort liability limited "to claims arising out of motor vehicle accidents." 370 Mass. at 630, 351 N.E.2d at 532. But the rule and its history in Hawaii do not permit us to lightly infer it is amenable to judicial modification which would remove the instant situation from its purview. ⁹

The Married Woman's Act, presently compiled as HRS...