Case Name: Alma SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. SOUTHERN FARM BUREAU CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant-Third-Party Plaintiff-Appellant (Dovic FONTENOT, Third-Party Defendant-Appellee)
Court: Louisiana Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1964-05-28
Citations: 164 So. 2d 647
Docket Number: No. 1156
Parties: Alma SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. SOUTHERN FARM BUREAU CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant-Third-Party Plaintiff-Appellant (Dovic FONTENOT, Third-Party Defendant-Appellee).
Judges: Before TATE, SAVOY, and HOOD, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 164
Pages: 647–653

Head Matter:
Alma SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. SOUTHERN FARM BUREAU CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant-Third-Party Plaintiff-Appellant (Dovic FONTENOT, Third-Party Defendant-Appellee).
No. 1156.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana. Third Circuit
May 28, 1964.
Dissenting Opinion May 29, 1964.
Rehearing Denied June 17, 1964.
Frugé & Foret, by J. Burton Foret, Ville Platte, for defendant-appellant.
Daniel J. McGee, Mamou, for plaintiff-appellee.
Before TATE, SAVOY, and HOOD, JJ.

Opinion:
TATE, Judge.
This appeal presents us with a question never previously considered by any reported decision of a Louisiana court: Does a husband's intraspousal immunity from suit by his wife for her personal injuries caused by his negligence, prevent a tortfeasor from seeking contribution from the husband for the payment of damages to the wife caused jointly by negligence of the tortfeasor and the husband?
In the present case, the plaintiff is the wife of Dovic Fontenot. She was injured while riding as a passenger in an automobile driven by her husband, when a collision occurred between it and a vehicle driven by Regile Bordelon. The plaintiff wife sues Bordelon's liability insurer to recover for her personal injuries.
The defendant herein impleads the plaintiff's husband as third-party defendant, seeking to enforce contribution from him as a joint tortfeasor (by virtue of the 1960 amendment of LSA-Civil' Code Article 2103), in the event that it is cast. The trial court sustained an exception of no cause of action to this third-party demand.
In a companion suit by the husband, which was consolidated for trial and appeal with the present, the trial court held that the fault of both Fontenot and Bordelon contributed to the accident, a ruling which we have affirmed this date. Fontenot v. Southern Farm Bureau Cas. Ins. Co., 164 So.2d 653. In the present suit by the wife, the trial court awarded the plaintiff wife judgment against Bordelon's insurer, since she was a passenger in Fontenot's car without fault, a ruling which we affirm herein for the reasons set forth in the cited companion suit. The general damages awarded to the wife for her personal injuries are justified by the record and are not questioned.
The sole remaining question of this appeal, then, concerns the defendant's appeal from the dismissal of its third-party demand against the plaintiff's husband to enforce contribution from him.
Primarily, the husband claims that the third-party plaintiff is not entitled to enforce contribution from him for his wife's damages, by virtue of a statutory immunity created by LSA-R.S. 9:291 (formerly Article 105 of the Code of Practice of 1870), and the underlying public policy represented by it. This statute provides, with certain very limited exceptions not here applicable, that "As long as the marriage continues and the spouses are not separated judicially a married woman may not sue her husband
Such intra-familial immunity from suit, as well as the parent's immunity from suit by the child (created by statute, LSA-R.S. 9:571, replacing Article 104 of the Code of Practice of 1870), and also the husband's immunity from suit by the wife except in limited instances (recognized by the Louisiana courts, in the absence of statute, as a matter of public policy: Kramer v. Freeman, 198 La. 244, 3 So.2d 609; Carter v. Third Dist. Homestead Ass'n., 195 La. 555, 197 So. 230; Smith v. Reddick, 42 La.Ann. 1055, 8 So. 539; Hawthorne v. Clark, 39 La.Ann. 678, 2 So. 561; Reich v. Reich, La.App. Orl., 23 So.2d 566), is essentially imposed "for the protection of family control and harmony" and to avoid disturbance by such suits of "the family relations", Ruiz v. Clancy, 182 La. 935, 162 So. 734, 737, and to prevent suits which will "disturb the tranquility of the home", Kramer v. Freeman, cited above, at 3 So.2d 616.
Able counsel for the appellant argues, however, that the statute in question prevents suit by the wife only against the husband, and that it does not by its terms forbid suits by third parties against the husband. Appellant suggests that it has been conferred a right by the 1960 legislation to enforce contribution from joint tortfeasors, and that it should not, in the absence of statutory qualification of this right, be denied such contribution from the present joint tortfeasor simply because the latter is the plaintiff's husband.
The trial court's dismissal of the claim for contribution from the husband was based upon the statutory and public policy of this state affording intraspousal immunity from suit for the other spouse's personal injuries, in order to preserve the marriage against disharmony and discord. The trial court stated that it could "visualize that, to permit a third-party to sue the husband of a wife for half of the wife's judgment, could result in the breakup of a marriage." The trial court felt that it would violate Louisiana's public policy and our state's prohibition against intraspousal litigation, to allow the third-party plaintiff to do indirectly what is forbidden to be done directly by law — that is, to hold the husband liable for payment for the wife's personal injuries.
The trial court's holding is in accord with the general rule applied in other states which grant joint tortfeasors the right to contribution from one another, and which likewise have an intraspousal or intra-familial immunity from suit in tort by the injured spouse or other family member. In the Annotation, "Right of tortfeasor to contribution where judgment creditor is spouse, parent, child, etc., of other tort-feasor against whom contribution is sought", 19 A.L.R.2d 1003, the holdings in these other states are summarized as follows:
"The courts have recognized and applied with practical unanimity the rule that to entitle a tortfeasor to contribution from another tortfeasor whose negligence has concurred in producing an injury to a third person, such third person must have an enforceable cause of action not only against the tortfeasor seeking contribution but also against the one against whom contribution is sought." The annotation further notes that contribution is denied where the injured plaintiff has no enforceable right of action against the negligent family member from whom contribution by the joint tort-feasor sued, "since the element of common liability of both tortfeasors to the injured person, essential to the right of contribution, is lacking in such cases." (Italics ours.)
The annotation and its 1960, 1962, and 1964 supplements show that thirteen jurisdictions do not permit contribution from the husband for damages recovered by the wife, either on the grounds of lack of common liability between the husband and the joint tortfeasor seeking contribution, or else on the public policy interest in preserving domestic peace and the family — namely, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Only two jurisdictions, Maine and Pennsylvania, are shown to hold to the contrary, on the ground that the paternalistic apprehension of domestic discord between the spouses was not felt to be so compelling as to require a joint tortfeasor to forego contribution from a jointly negligent spouse.
The encyclopedias state the general rule as follows: 18 C.J.S. Contribution, § 3, p. 6 : " even though concurrent negligence exists, if the injured party cannot as a matter of law recover from one tort-feasor, there exists no common liability entitling the other to contribution from him." At 13 Am.Jur. "Contribution", Section 52, p'. 49: "If, as a matter of law, the concurring negligence of the party from whom contribution is sought gives the injured party no cause of action against him, the claimant cannot recover contribution, even though such concurring negligence was a proximate cause of the injury."
The third-party demand is a fairly recent innovation in Louisiana. It is authorized by LSA-C.C.P. Article 1111, by which a defendant may implead as third party defendant any person "who is or may be liable to him for all or part of" the principal demand.
This Louisiana statute is based upon Rule 14(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which contains wording identical to that just quoted. In construing the right under the federal rules of a defendant to implead as third-party defendant a husband in order to enforce contribution from him under the present circumstances, "a majority of decisions hold that since the spouse cannot be sued directly, he or she is not liable, and thus, since the common liability necessary for contribution is lacking, im-pleader is not proper." 1A Barron & Holtzoff, Federal Practice and Procedure (1960 rev. ed.), Section 426.4, p. 695.
The Louisiana legislature has only fairly recently authorized contribution between joint tortfeasors, as well as a third-party practice patterned on the Federal Rules. In the great majority of jurisdictions which adopted these remedies previous to Louisiana's recent innovations in such regard, the right of contribution has been held to be non-existent where the husband is immune from suit by the wife directly and is therefore not jointly liable with the other tortfeasor. When these jurisdictions with longer experience with these remedies have interpreted them as thus stated, we are unwilling to say that the Louisiana legislature intended by these recent enactments to destroy Louisiana's traditional and statutory intraspousal immunity from suit for the tort damages of one spouse caused by the fault of the other.
Appellant relies, however, upon Gray v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co., W.D. La., 31 F.Supp. 299 (1940), where in similar circumstances a husband was permitted to be impleaded as third-party defendant. The holding was based upon the conception that the wife had a substantive cause of action against the husband, which the federal procedural law permitted enforcement of, since the statute prohibiting suit by a wife against a husband constituted state procedural law and was therefore not applicable in the federal proceeding. 31 F.Supp. 305-306. This reasoning is inapplicable to the present state court proceedings, where it cannot be argued that the state statute does not govern federal proceedings; aside from which, the Gray decision is against the weight of authority (Barron & Holtzoff, cited above, Section 426.4) and was subsequently disapproved by a higher appellate court with jurisdiction over the tribunal rendering it (Linkenhoger v. Owens, C.A. 5, 181 F.2d 97, 1950).
In concluding, it is also to be remembered that in Louisiana the right to enforce contribution does not by statute arise from the circumstance of concurrent negligence on the part of joint tortfeasors. It arises "When two or more debtors are liable in solido", LSA-C.C. Art. 2103. (Italics ours.) Joint tortfeasors not liable in solido, therefore, cannote enforce contribution from one another.
"There is an obligation in solido on the part of the debtors, when they are obliged to the same thing, so that each may be compelled for the whole, and when the payment which is made by one of them, exonerates the others toward the creditor", LSA-C.C. Art. 2091. In the instant case, the husband, because of his statutory immunity, is not obligated "to the same thing" (payment of the wife's damages) as is the other tort-feasor, nor can he be compelled to pay it. Thus, the husband-appellee is not liable in solido with the other tortfeasor involved in the present accident.
Therefore, aside from reasons of public policy, such latter tortfeasor (and his insurer, appellant herein, subrogated to the tortfeasor's rights) is not entitled to enforce contribution from the husband, since, as previously noted, under the terms of the statute creating the right, joint tortfeasors can enforce contribution from one another only if solidarily liable with one another.
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm, at the cost of the defendant-appellant (third-party plaintiff), the judgment of the trial court
Affirmed.