Varholla v. Varholla

• Decision Date: 07 December 1978
• Docket Number: No. 78-491,78-491
• Citation: 56 Ohio St.2d 269,383 N.E.2d 888
• Parties: , 10 O.O.3d 403 VARHOLLA, Appellant, v. VARHOLLA, Appellee.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Page 269

56 Ohio St.2d 269

383 N.E.2d 888, 10 O.O.3d 403

VARHOLLA, Appellant, v. VARHOLLA, Appellee.

No. 78-491.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Dec. 7, 1978.

Appellant, Charlotte Varholla, instituted this action in the Court of Common Pleas of Tuscarawas County, seeking damages for personal injuries allegedly sustained by the negligent operation of a motor vehicle by appellee, William R. Varholla, appellant's husband. Appellant was a passenger in the motor vehicle operated by her husband at the time of the accident. At all times pertinent to this action, the parties were married and living together as husband and wife.

A motion by appellee for summary judgment was granted by the trial court on the ground that appellee was immune from suit by his spouse. Judgment for appellee was affirmed by the Court of Appeals.

This cause comes before this court upon allowance of a motion to certify the record.

Johnson & Johnson Co., L. P. A., and Danny D. Johnson, New Philadelphia, for appellant.

Day, Ketterer, Raley, Wright & Rybolt, John R. Werren and Ralph F. Dublikar, Canton, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

The question presented is whether one spouse can maintain an action for personal injuries received by the alleged negligence of the other spouse, where the married parties are living together as husband and wife at the time of the alleged injury.

The same issue was before this court in Lyons v. Lyons (1965), 2 Ohio St.2d 243, 208 N.E.2d 533, where we held that such actions were barred by interspousal immunity. Our reasons were threefold: (1) the immunity promotes marital harmony by discouraging otherwise litigious spouses from pursuing real or fanciful claims to the detriment of the family unit; (2) the immunity prevents fraud and collusion at the expense of tactically disadvantaged insurance companies; and (3) as this involves a matter of public policy, changes in this area must emanate from the General Assembly, not the courts.

Appellant urges the court to overrule this precedent on the ground that the reasons supporting our holding in Lyons, supra, are either illusory or no longer compelling. Suffice it to say that we adhere to the principles expressed in Lyons, in the belief that they are as sound today in social policy as they are in reason. Appellant's contention cannot be accepted in disregard of clear precedent.

Appellant also challenges the validity of the interspousal immunity doctrine based on this court's decision in Primes v. Tyler (1975), 43 Ohio St.2d 195, 331 N.E.2d 723, which held R.C. 4515.02, the "guest statute," unconstitutional. The challenge in Primes was directed essentially to the differential treatment accorded "paying" and "non-paying" passengers under the statute; the "non-paying" passengers being unable to recover for injuries sustained by a driver's negligent operation of a motor vehicle. The stated purposes in support of the statute were: (1) to prevent spurious claims by passengers against drivers in order to defraud insurance companies and; (2) to preserve the hospitality of the host driver.

We think it sufficient to state that the interspousal immunity doctrine, with its inherent differential treatment of spouses and non-spouses, reasonably relates to the legitimate state interest of fostering marital harmony and preventing fraud and collusion. The difference between this doctrine and R.C. 4515.02 lies in the higher state concern for regulating marriage and the greater potential for fraud stemming from the marital relationship, where an insured defendant spouse stands to benefit personally from losing a lawsuit instituted by his spouse. Appellant's contention is accordingly not well taken.

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is hereby affirmed.

Judgment affirmed.

LEACH, C. J., and HERBERT, CELEBREZZE, PAUL W. BROWN, SWEENEY and LOCHER, JJ., concur.

WILLIAM B. BROWN, Justice, dissenting.

By endorsing, in 1978, the doctrine that spouses who are living together cannot sue one another for injuries caused by each other's negligence, the majority perpetuates a common-law rule which has had no support in fact, or even in legal fiction, for over a century. Because I believe that the majority's endorsement of interspousal immunity is regressive, that it leads to unfair and probably unconstitutional results, and that it proves all too certainly that justice can be blind, at least to the realities of the 20th Century, I must dissent.

I.

The doctrine of interspousal immunity was originally based on the legal fiction that a husband and wife are one. 1 Blackstone's Commentaries 442 (1765). While this was undoubtedly a fiction of epic proportions, it supported the proposition that spouses cannot sue one another in tort. However, in the 1840's, American jurisdictions passed statutes abrogating that common-law fiction and insuring wives as well as husbands the right to sue and be sued for the torts committed by or to them. Once those acts were passed, the doctrine of interspousal immunity became an anachronism an anachronism which the majority opinion perpetuates.

Other jurisdictions have not displayed this court's interest in preserving interspousal immunity. When this court upheld the doctrine last, in Lyons v. Lyons (1965), 2 Ohio St.2d 243, 208 N.E.2d 533, it joined a shrinking Majority of American jurisdictions. Today that shrinking majority has become a shrinking Minority. Annotation, 43 A.L.R.2d 632 and Later Case Service.

Why that minority is shrinking becomes apparent when one scrutinizes the commonly cited arguments for supporting interspousal immunity set forth in Lyons. These arguments are (1) that interspousal immunity is necessary to promote marital harmony; (2) that interspousal immunity prevents fraud and collusion against tactically disadvantaged insurance companies; and (3) that abrogating interspousal immunity is a legislative, rather than a judicial, task. None of these arguments is persuasive.

The last argument, that the General Assembly should do away with interspousal immunity, has never been persuasive. Interspousal immunity has its origins in common law. As a judicially-created doctrine, it may be judicially abolished. (Sears v. Cincinnati (1972), 31 Ohio St.2d 157, 161, 285 N.E.2d 732, overruling paragraph one of the syllabus in Hyde v. Lakewood (1965), 2 Ohio St.2d 155, 207 N.E.2d 547; Muskopf v. Corning (1961), 55 Cal.2d 211, 11 Cal.Rptr. 89, 359 P.2d 457; Molitor v. Kaneland Community United District No. 302 (1959), 18 Ill.2d 11, 25, 163 N.E.2d 89.)

The second rationale underlying Lyons is that interspousal immunity prevents collusion in cases brought by one married partner against the other's insurance company. The reasons underlying that argument are strained indeed. To begin with, it is unlikely that "a wife's love for her husband is such that she is more likely to bring a false suit against him that a genuine one." (Prosser on Torts, 863, Section 122.) Moreover, there are numerous safeguards against fraudulent claims built into the judicial process. Given the deterrent of a perjury charge and such devices for uncovering the truth as pre-trial discovery and cross-examination, the odds of a couple's successfully pursuing a fraudulent claim are remote. Klein v. Klein (1962), 58 Cal.2d 692, 26 Cal.Rptr. 102, 376 P.2d 70. Finally, this court rejected a similar collusion argument when it unanimously declared Ohio's guest statu...