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Langan v. St. Vincent's Hospital of New York10/11/2005
on Benefits Clause of the State's Constitution, committed same-sex couples had the right to the "common benefits and protections that flow from marriage under Vermont law" (id. at 226 [emphasis supplied]). There was nothing either in the Court's decision or in the legislation it produced to suggest that Vermont's concern was other than purely local or that it intended to affect the rights of same-sex couples beyond its own borders. Vermont, therefore, has no legitimate interest in determining whether the plaintiff, a resident of New York, has the right to maintain a wrongful death action against a New York defendant in connection with the death of another resident of New York occurring in this State. Indeed, during virtually all of their lives together, the plaintiff and the decedent resided in New York, and it was in this State that the conduct complained of occurred and the decedent died. Under these circumstances, New York certainly has the most significant contacts with the case and, therefore, the stronger interest in applying the provisions of its own wrongful death law (see e.g. Padula v Lilarn Props. Corp., 84 NY2d 519, 522; compare Wooden v Western NY & PR Co., 126 NY 10 [applying Pennsylvania's wrongful death statute, which permitted widow to sue in her own name, where death occurred in Pennsylvania]). Accordingly, like the majority, I reject the contention that the doctrine of comity demands that the plaintiff be permitted to sue in New York for wrongful death.
I turn, then, to the area of my disagreement with the majority's resolution of the appeal.
When a statute affords different treatment to similarly-situated persons on the basis of a constitutionally cognizable characteristic, the disparity of treatment must, at the least, bear some rational relationship to a legitimate governmental objective promoted by the statute. As the United States Supreme Court long ago explained:
"It is unnecessary to say that the 'equal protection of the laws' required by the Fourteenth Amendment does not prevent the states from resorting to classification for the purposes of legislation . . . But the classification must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike" (F.S. Royster Guano Co. v Commonwealt h of Virginia, 253 US 412, 415).
Stated otherwise, " he Equal Protection Clause [denies] to States the power to legislate that different treatment be accorded to persons placed by a statute into different classes on the basis of criteria wholly unrelated to the objective of that statute" (Reed v Reed, 404 US 71, 75-76). The question to be addressed, therefore, is whether, considering the purpose and objective of the wrongful death statute, there is some ground of difference that rationally explains the different treatment the statute accords to spouses and partners in a Vermont civil union (see Eisenstadt v Baird, 405 US 438, 447).
The purpose of the wrongful death statute is well-defined and firmly established. It is not intended to recompense the survivor for the loss of companionship or consortium, or for the pain and anguish that accompanies the wrongful and unexpected loss of a loved one. It is instead designed solely to make a culpable tortfeasor liable for fair and just compensation to those who, by reason of their relationship to the decedent, suffer economic injury as a result of the decedent's death (see EPTL 5-4.3 ). A person suffers economic injury in this context when the death deprives him or her of a reasonable expectation of future financial assistance or support from the deceden
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