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Gbye v. Gbye8/18/1998
Appeal by plaintiff-appellant from order entered 10 July 1997 by judge James C. Spencer, Jr. in Alamance County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 30 April 1998.
In actions arising in tort, the doctrine of lex loci deliciti provides that the law of the state where the tort was allegedly committed controls the substantive issues of the case. Terry v. Pullman Trailmobile, 92 N.C. App. 687, 376 S.E.2d 47 (1989). Because the accident in which the minor daughter was killed occurred in Alabama, a state which provides parents with immunity from suit by their children, we hold that the trial court properly dismissed the wrongful death action by the child's estate against the child's mother.
On 3 June 1995, the mother in this action, a resident of Alamance County, North Carolina, drove her automobile through Baldwin County, Alabama with her two minor daughters riding in the back seat when her vehicle was involved in an one car accident killing her youngest daughter.
As a result of the child's death, the child's father brought this wrongful death action against his wife in Alamance County Superior Court on behalf of his daughter's estate. The mother answered, moving to dismiss the wrongful death claim on the ground that the rule of lex loci deliciti required that Alabama's parental immunity doctrine be applied to bar her husband's claim against her on behalf of his daughter. The trial court agreed and dismissed the action for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted under Rule 12(b)(6). From that order, this appeal followed.
On appeal, the child's estate contends that the trial court erred in applying Alabama's parental immunity law to bar this wrongful death action. According to the child's estate, the trial court should have applied the law of this State, which has specifically abolished parental immunity in cases involving motor vehicle accidents, see N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-539.21 (1991), not the law of Alabama. We disagree.
Under traditional rules of conflict law, matters affecting the substantive rights of the parties are determined by lex loci deliciti, the law of the situs of the claim. Boudreau v. Baughman, 322 N.C. 331, 335, 368 S.E.2d 849, 853-54 (1988)(citing Charnock v. Taylor, 223 N.C. 360, 26 S.E.2d 911 (1943)). For actions arising in tort, it is well-settled that the state where the injury occurred is considered the situs of the claim. Id. "Thus, under North Carolina law, when the injury giving rise to a negligence or strict liability claim occurs in another state, the law of that state governs resolution of the substantive issues in the controversy." Id. (citations omitted).
In this case, the automobile accident which killed the child occurred in Baldwin County, Alabama. Therefore, under the rule of lex loci deliciti, Alabama law, which recognizes the doctrine of parental immunity, governs the threshold issue in this case, namely, whether the child's estate can make out a valid claim upon which relief can be granted.
The child's estate argues that although the rule of lex loci deliciti applies in a "technical sense," it should not be applied in this particular case because (1) "there has been a noted judicial trend away from a mechanical application of the traditional lex loci deliciti doctrine to a more 'modern approach' under which the applicable law is determined by analyzing a number of objective factors" and (2) Alabama's parental immunity doctrine is contrary to the "extraordinarily strong public policy" in this state against such immunity in cases involving motor vehicle accidents as is evidenced by our legislature's abolition of the parental immunity doctrine in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-5
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