Court Opinion

ID: 9644801
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:05:18.306725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:07:11.519750
License: Public Domain

DANIEL, Justice
(concurring).
I am compelled to concur, because of the precedents cited. However, in anticipation that the Legislature may some day look at this and similar cases in considering whether to amend the statutes which are held to require our application of the law of another state to this controversy,1 we should note the factual allegations and arguments advanced by petitioners for the application of Texas law, as well as the difference that Texas law would make in the outcome of this decision.
Although the plane crash occurred in Missouri, all parties to this suit are alleged to be residents of Texas. Likewise, the deceased, Tracy D. Click, husband of petitioner Evelyn J. Click and father of their three minor children, was a resident of Dallas, Texas. It is alleged that his death was the result of acts of negligence on the part of employees of the owner of the private plane, Star-Bar, Inc., a corporation with its principal place of business in Dallas County, Texas, which company is a respondent herein; that Star-Bar, Inc., is the alter-ego of and controlled by the other respondent, Thuron Industries, Inc., a corporation which also has its principal place of business in Dallas County, Texas. Petitioners argue that the respective rights and relationships of the parties involved in or affected by this plane crash are all based in Texas; that Missouri has no domestic policy or interest in protecting or enforcing the respective rights of the Texas parties involved in the crash; and that Texas law should apply because Texas is the state with the greatest interest in and most significant contacts with the parties and the occurrence.
Under Missouri law, the cause of action is barred because it was not filed within one year after the death of Tracy D. Click. If Texas law were applicable, this action by the widow and her children, filed within two years after the death, would not be barred by limitation. Art. 5526, § 7, V.A. T.S. Under Texas law, they would have their day in court.
At least twenty states and the District of Columbia have abandoned the rigid "place-of-wrong” rule, under which only the law of the state of the injury or death may be considered and applied.2 They have adopted the state-interest analysis or “most significant contacts” rule, under which is applied the law of the state hav*720ing the most significant relevant contacts with or interest in the parties or the occurrence. The Supreme Court of the United States has sanctioned the application of this rule, and there appears to he no constitutional impediment to the Texas Legislature extending the Texas Wrongful Death Statute to accidents occurring outside this state in a manner which would permit our courts to apply the state-interest analysis or most significant contacts rule. Richards v. United States, 369 U.S. 1, 82 S.Ct. 585, 7 L.Ed.2d 492 (1962). The Legislature has extended Texas law to deaths of Texas employees occurring in other states due to injuries covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Art. 8306, § 19, V.A.T.S.
Petitioners’ arguments for application of Texas law, in spite of this Court’s consistent interpretation that Article 4671 has no extraterritorial effect, are the same as those which were made and overruled by a divided Court in Marmon v. Mustang Aviation, Inc., 430 S.W.2d 182 (Tex.1968). That case also involved Texas residents traveling on a business trip in a private airplane owned by a Texas corporation. Due to the negligence of the pilot, a Texas resident employed by the Texas corporation, the plane crashed in Colorado approximately 60 miles before crossing back into Texas. After applying Colorado law, including its statutory limit on recovery, the Court said:
‘‘The circumstance that we may believe that a case such as this should be controlled by Texas law or that the Legislature, after the development of the ‘significant contacts rule,’ should have amended the statute so as to give it an extraterritorial effect, does not authorize us to enter the legislative field. We have not yet adopted the theory that the Legislature’s non-action authorizes judicial action in legislative matters.” 430 S.W.2d at 187.
STEAKLEY and REAVLEY, JJ., join.

. Articles 4671 and 4678, V.A.T.S.

. See cases cited by Professor Russell J. Weintraub in The Emerging Problems in Judicial Administration of a State-Interest Analysis of Tort Conflict of Laws Problems, 44 S.Cal.L.Rev. 877 (1971).