Pevoski v. Pevoski

• Decision Date: 18 November 1976
• Citation: 358 N.E.2d 416,371 Mass. 358
• Parties: Juliette G. PEVOSKI v. Joseph J. PEVOSKI.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 416

358 N.E.2d 416

371 Mass. 358

Juliette G. PEVOSKI

v. Joseph J. PEVOSKI.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Berkshire.

Argued Sept. 14, 1976.

Decided Nov. 18, 1976.

Robert M. Fuster, Pittsfield, for plaintiff.

John D. Lanoue, Adams, for defendant.

Before HENNESSEY, C.J., and REARDON, QUIRICO, KAPLAN and WILKINS, JJ.

REARDON, Justice.

The plaintiff and the defendant are husband and wife. On August 8, 1971, their car was involved in a three-car collision in New York State. It would appear that the Pevoski automobile (and apparently the other two as well) was registered, insured and garaged in this Commonwealth, and all three vehicles were operated by Massachusetts residents. The wife, a passenger in the car driven by her husband, instituted an action against him seeking damages for injuries sustained in the accident. The husband's motion for summary judgment on the ground by interspousal tort immunity was granted by a judge of the Superior Court. This action is now challenged in the wife's appeal.

Two questions are presented: first, whether Massachusetts or New York State law (allowing interspousal tort actions) applies to the wife's action, and, second, whether the result of LEWIS V. LEWIS, --- MASS. ---, 351 N.E.2D 526 (1976)^A, applies retroactively to causes of action arising prior to the date of that decision.

The substantive law of New York State regarding interspousal actions is set forth in New York General Obligations Law § 3--313(2) (McKinney 1964); 'A married woman has a right of action against her husband for his wrongful or tortious acts resulting to her in any personal injury . . . or resulting in injury to her property, as if they were unmarried, and she is liable to her husband for her wrongful or tortious acts resulting in any such personal injury to her husband or to his property, as if they were unmarried.' If New York law applies, this action clearly may be maintained and the grant of summary judgment must be reversed.

We are thus confronted at the outset with a question of the choice of applicable law. In this Commonwealth, lex loci delicti has been firmly established as the general tort conflicts rule. See, e.g., Brogie v. Vogel, 348 Mass. 619, 205 N.E.2d 234 (1965); Goodale v. Morrison, 343 Mass. 607, 180 N.E.2d 67 (1962); Murphy v. Smith, 307 Mass. 64, 29 N.E.2d 726 (1940). This rule has provided, and will continue to provide, a rational and just procedure for selecting the law governing the vast majority of issues in multistate tort suits. For example, in motor vehicle torts such as the one at bar standards of negligence will be appropriately furnished by the law of the jurisdiction in which the accident occurred. Rules of the road are determined quite properly by the State in which these roads are located--by the jurisdiction having the strongest interest in regulating the conduct of drivers on these highways.

But we recognize that there also may be particular issues on which the interests of lex loci delicti are not so strong. Indeed on the particular facts of a case another jurisdiction may sometimes be more concerned and more involved with certain issues than the State in which the conduct occurred. '(T)here is no reason why all issues arising out of a tort claim must be resolved by reference to the law of the same jurisdiction. Where the issue involves standards of conduct, it is more than likely that it is the law of the place of the tort which will be controlling but the disposition of other issues must turn, as does the issue of the standard of conduct itself, on the law of the jurisdiction which has the strongest interest in the resolution of the particular issue presented.' Babcock v. Jackson, 12 N.Y.2d 473, 484, 240 N.Y.S.2d 743, 752, 191 N.E.2d 279, 285 (1963). In this instance the economic and social impact of this litigation will fall on Massachusetts domiciliaries and a Massachusetts insurer. New York has an undoubted interest in enforcing its traffic laws and in making its highways safe for travel but it has no legitimate interest in regulating the interspousal relationships of Massachusetts domiciliaries who chance to be injured within its borders.

Babcock, v. Jackson, supra, indicates clearly that the State of New York would assert no interest on the facts of this accident. That case involved a New York passenger injured by the alleged negligence of her host driver, also a resident of New York. The accident occurred in the Province of Ontario, Canada, which at that time had a guest statute barring recovery by the guest. New York law recognized no such disability. The Babcock court, at 483, 240 N.Y.S.2d at 751, 191 N.E.2d at 284, speaking through Judge Fuld, held that as to the status of the guest 'it is New York, the place where the parties resided, where their guest-host relationship arose and where the trip began and was to end, rather than Ontario, the place of the fortuitous occurrence of the accident, which has the dominant contacts and the superior claim for application of its law. Although the rightness or wrongness of (the) defendant's conduct may depend upon the law of the particular jurisdiction through which the automobile passes, the rights and liabilities of the parties which stem from their guest-host relationship should remain constant and not vary and shift as the automobile proceeds from place to place.' Cf. Clark v. Clark, 107 N.H. 351, 357, 222 A.2d 205 (1966) (Kenison, C.J.).

We agree with the conflicts approach suggested by the Babcock case and thus conclude that the issue of interspousal immunity should be governed in the present case by the law of this Commonwealth. In determining the content of that law, our starting point must be this court's recent decision in Lewis v. Lewis, --- Mass. ---, --- - ---, ^b 351 N.E.2d 526 (1976), where we concluded that 'the common law rule of interspousal immunity . . . should no longer bar an action by one spouse against another in a case such as the present one. We believe this result is consistent with the general principle that if there is tortious injury there should be recover, and only strong arguments of public policy should justify a judicially created immunity for tortfeasors and bar to recovery for injured victims. . . . We have examined the reasons offered in support of the common law immunity doctrine and, whatever their vitality in the social context of generations past, we find them inadequate today to support a general rule of interspousal tort immunity.'

We find that the factors which mandated this result in the Lewis case are equally compelling in the present action. The Lewis case eliminated the anachronism of interspousal immunity. We see no sound reason why the principle of the Lewis case should not apply...