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Albinger v. Harris6/6/2002
nput on these critical issues?
The practical problems arising from the majority's impulsiveness become quickly apparent. For example, a predicate to its gender inequity approach is its conclusion that "anti-heart balm" statutes have "closed courtrooms across the nation to female plaintiffs seeking damages." What is the factual basis for assuming that women are more likely to seek damages for breach of a promise to marry than men? Tomko's annotation would suggest that gender is not a factor. She states that the purpose of heart balm statutes was originally "to avert perpetration of fraud by adventurers or adventuresses . . . ." 44 A.L.R. 5th at 27. There is no authority provided for the quantum leap taken by the majority. It must be so simply because the majority says so.
The next step in the majority's shaky syllogism is its unsupported conclusion that " onditional gift theory applied exclusively to engagement ring cases carves an exception in the state's gift law for the benefit of predominantly male plaintiffs." Furthermore, the majority states that while "Montana's 'anti-heart balm' statute . . . bars all plaintiffs from recovering any share of non-refundable expenses incurred in planning a cancelled wedding," it assumes that women usually incur these expenses. The majority's conclusion from these unsupported assumptions is that, therefore, we cannot, in fairness, enforce conditional gift law when it pertains to engagement rings.
First of all, either gender can given an engagement ring. For example, in Vigil v. Haber (N.M. 1994), 888 P.2d 455, the parties exchanged engagement rings. However, their relationship deteriorated, the couple separated, and following their separation a hearing examiner determined that the parties should return the rings they had given each other. The plaintiff immediately returned the ring he had along with other of the defendant's possessions. However, the defendant objected to returning the engagement ring that had been given to her. The New Mexico Supreme Court held that the ring was a conditional gift dependant on the parties' marriage and should be returned. Vigil, 888 P.2d at 458. What if the roles had been reversed and the woman had returned the engagement ring given to her but the man had refused to do so? According to this Court, she would not be allowed to recover the engagement ring that she had given to her fiancé, no matter how substantial the value and unfair the result because requiring the return of engagement rings is unfair to women.
The second problem with the majority's assumptions is the assumption that conditional gift law as it relates to gifts exchanged in anticipation of marriage only applies to wedding rings. It does not. For example, in Pavlicic, a case which disproves the theory that jurisprudence cannot be written in readable prose, the plaintiff was a 75-year-old man when the 26-year-old defendant asked for his hand in marriage. While he first protested on the basis of his age, she assured him that she was no longer interested in "young fellows" and prevailed upon him to make the commitment. Over the course of the next four years, she then prevailed upon him to pay the mortgage on her home, buy her two new cars, an engagement ring, a diamond for her mother's ring, remodel her house, and advance her $5000 to purchase a saloon which they could jointly operate. The problem was that after she received the money for the saloon, she disappeared. She was next seen in another town operating Ruby's bar and married to a man two years her junior. As noted by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court:
When George emerged from the mists and fogs of his disappointment and disillusionment he brought an action in equi
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