Reich v. Purcell

• Court: United States State Supreme Court (California)
• Writing for the Court: TRAYNOR
• Citation: 67 Cal.2d 551,432 P.2d 727,63 Cal.Rptr. 31
• Parties: , 432 P.2d 727 Lee REICH et al., Individually and as Administrator, etc., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. Joseph PURCELL, Defendant and Respondent. L.A. 28903.
• Decision Date: 30 October 1967

Page 31

63 Cal.Rptr. 31 67 Cal.2d 551, 432 P.2d 727 Lee REICH et al., Individually and as Administrator, etc., Plaintiffs and Appellants,
v.
Joseph PURCELL, Defendant and Respondent. L.A. 28903. Supreme Court of California,
In Bank. Oct. 30, 1967.
As Modified Nov. 29, 1967.

Page 32

[432 P.2d 728] [67 Cal.2d 552] Irell & Manella, Charles H. Phillips, Richard H. Borow and J. Gordon Hansen, Los Angeles, for plaintiffs and appellants.

John R. Allport, Los Angeles, for defendant and respondent.

TRAYNOR, Chief Justice.

This wrongful death action arose out of a head-on collision of two automobiles in Missouri. One of the automobiles was owned and operated by defendant Joseph Purcell, a resident and domiciliary of California who was on his way to a vacation in Illinois. The other automobile was owned and operated by Mrs. Reich, the wife of plaintiff Lee Reich. The Reichs then resided in Ohio and Mrs. Reich and the Reichs' two children, Jay and Jeffry, were on their way to California, where the Reichs were contemplating settling. Mrs. Reich and Jay were killed in the collision, and Jeffry was injured.

Plaintiffs, Lee Reich and Jeffry Reich, are the heirs of Mrs. Reich and Lee Reich is the heir of Jay Reich. Plaintiffs moved to California and became permanent residents here after the accident. The estates of Mrs. Reich and Jay Reich are being administered in Ohio.

The parties stipulated that judgment be entered in specified amounts for the wrongful death of Jay, for the personal injuries suffered by Jeffry, and for the damages to Mrs. Reich's automobile. For the death of Mrs. Reich they stipulated that judgment be entered for $55,000 or $25,000 depending on the court's ruling on the applicability of the Missouri limitation of damages to a maximum of $25,000. (Vernon's Ann.Mo.Stats. § 537.090.) ¹ Neither Ohio nor California limit recovery [67 Cal.2d 553] in wrongful death actions. ²

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[432 P.2d 729] The trial court held that the Missouri limitation applied because the accident occurred there and entered judgment accordingly. Plaintiffs appeal.

For many years courts applied the law of the place of the wrong in tort actions regardless of the issues before the court, e.g., whether they involved conduct, survival of actions, applicability of a wrongful death statute, immunity from liability, or other rules determining whether a legal injury has been sustained. (See Loranger v. Nadeau, 215 Cal. 362, 366, 10 P.2d 63, 84 A.L.R. 1264; Ryan v. North Alaska Salmon Co., 153 Cal. 438, 439, 95 P. 862; Rest. Conf. of Laws, § 378 et seq.) It was assumed that the law of the place of the wrong created the cause of action and necessarily determined the extent of the liability. (Slater v. Mexican National R.R. Co., 194 U.S. 120, 126, 24 S.Ct. 581, 48 L.Ed. 900.) Aside from procedural difficulties (see Currie, Selected Essays on Conflict of Laws (1963) pp. 10--18), this theory worked well enough when all the relevant events took place in one jurisdiction, but the action was brought in another. In a complex situation involving multistate contacts, however, no single state alone can be deemed to create exclusively governing rights. (Crider v. Zurich Ins. Co., 380 U.S. 39, 42, 85 S.Ct. 769, 13 L.Ed.2d 641; Clay v. Sun Ins. Office, Ltd., 377 U.S. 179, 181--182, 84 S.Ct. 1197, 12 L.Ed.2d 229; Watson v. Employers Liability Corp., 348 U.S. 66, 72--73, 75 S.Ct. 166, 99 L.Ed. 74.) The forum must search to find the proper law to apply based upon the interests of the litigants and the involved states. Such complex cases elucidate what the simpler cases obscured, namely, that the forum can only apply its own law. (See Lein v. Parkin, 49 Cal.2d 397, 318 P.2d 1; Grant v. McAuliffe, 41 Cal.2d 859, 264 P.2d 944, 42 A.L.R.2d 1162; W. W. Cook, The Logical and Legal Basis of Conflict of Laws (1942), pp. 20--21; Cavers, Two 'Local Law' Theories, 63 Harv.L.Rev. 822--824.) When it purports to do otherwise, it is not enforcing foreign rights but choosing a foreign rule of decision as the appropriate one to apply to the case before it. [67 Cal.2d 554] Moreover, it has now been demonstrated that a choice of law resulting from a hopeless search for a governing foreign law to create a foreign vested right may defeat the legitimate interests of the litigants and the states involved. (See generally, Cavers, The Choice of Law Process (1965); Currie, Selected Essays on Conflict of Laws, supra; Ehrenzweig, Conflict of Laws (1962).)

Accordingly, when application of the law of the place of the wrong would defeat the interests of the litigants and of the states concerned, we have not applied that law. (Grant v. McAuliffe, supra, 41 Cal.2d 859, 867, 264 P.2d 944; Emery v. Emery, 45 Cal.2d 421, 428, 289 P.2d 218.) Grant was an action for personal injuries arising out of an automobile accident in Arizona between California residents. The driver whose negligence caused the accident died, and the court had to choose between the California rule that allowed an action against the personal representative and the Arizona rule...