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Hoeller v. Riverside Resort Hotel5/21/1991
r urban centers all over the country; there is extensive advertising in many cities in Arizona. It reputedly maintains a large casino parking lot in Arizona and a ferry operation between the
lot and the casino. It therefore cannot help but know that many of the patrons it seeks, many of those who sit at its tables and drink its liquor, have come to the casino from Arizona and will return to Arizona. The casino also must know that those who leave its facilities in an intoxicated condition and drive on Arizona's highways may cause accidents that injure innocent third persons in Arizona. The casino cannot justifiably expect that only Nevada law will be applied to determine whether it must respond in damages for negligently serving alcohol to intoxicated patrons.
The Hoellers, on the other hand, had no contact with Nevada. They were Arizona residents injured by an Arizona resident while driving on an Arizona highway. Under those circumstances, the Hoellers would be justified in expecting that their personal injury claims would be adjudicated under Arizona law. As the Missouri Court of Appeals stated in analyzing closely analogous facts:
Predictability of result would seem to point to a choice of Missouri law. On the one hand, one could say that a Missouri choice of law would be an unfair surprise to [the defendant tavern owner] because her connection with the present case occurred as a result of transactions in Illinois . However, it is unlikely that [the tavern owner] would have been totally unaware that many of her patrons came from Missouri because her tavern is located near the Illinois-Missouri border in Granite City, Illinois. Thus, the fact that an accident occurred in Missouri as a result of the intoxicated condition of one of her patrons blunts any claim of respondent that a choice of Missouri law was an unpredictable consequence.
If one examines the question of predictability from appellants' standpoint, any choice of law other than Missouri law would be a manifestly unfair surprise. Appellants reside in Missouri. The decedent lived and worked here. To tell appellants that a Missouri resident who is killed by a second Missouri resident while the former is working within Missouri that Illinois law governs a resulting lawsuit would doubtless be met with shock and disbelief.
Carver v. Schafer, 647 S.W.2d 570, 577-78 (Mo.App.1983).
Similarly, the goal of promoting certainty and uniformity of result would be furthered best by applying Arizona law. Of the four decisions from other jurisdictions of which we are aware concerning fact situations and legal conflicts similar to those in the instant case, three courts have applied the law of the forum jurisdiction. See Sommers v. 13300 Brandon Corp., 712 F.Supp. 702, 705-6 (N.D.Ill.1989) (applying "most significant relationship" analysis of Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws §§ 6, 145 and 146); Blamey v. Brown, 270 N.W.2d 884, 890, 2 A.L.R. 4th 940 (Minn.1978), overruled on other grounds, West American Ins. Co. v. Westin, Inc., 337 N.W.2d 676 (Minn.1983) (applying five "choice-influencing considerations" roughly analogous to the factors listed in Restatement § 6(2)); Carver, 647 S.W.2d at 578 (applying Restatement's "most significant relationship" analysis). See generally Annotation, Choice of Law as to Liability of Liquor Seller for Injuries Caused by Intoxicated Person, 2 A.L.R. 4th 952 (1980).
Only in Estates of Braun v. Cactus Pete's, Inc., 108 Idaho 798, 702 P.2d 836 (1985), which the trial court followed in the instant case, was the law of the tavern owner's place of business applied. Although the Idaho Supreme Court in Estate
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