Court Opinion

ID: 9737517
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:27:37.806622+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:59.521925
License: Public Domain

Levin, P. J.
(dissenting). I agree with my brothers that the doctrine of lex loci delicti is obsolete. Our principal disagreement concerns our reviewing function. In my opinion, merely because the Michigan Supreme Court has not formally repudiated lex loci does not bind us to await its decision if we are convinced that were it passing on the question today the Supreme Court would adopt another approach to the choice-of-law problem.
1.
Judge Gillis’ opinion fully demonstrates that thosé courts which have felt themselves free to reexamine the question have repudiated lex loci delicti.
“No conflict of laws authority in America today agrees that the old rule should be retained. See, e. g., texts and articles by Cavers, Ehrenzweig, Hancock, Leflar, Morris, Reese, Rheinstein, Trautman, Traynor, von Mehren and Weintraub, to mention only a few. No American court which has felt free to re-examine the matter thoroughly in the last decade has chosen to retain the old rule.” Clark v. Clark (1966), 107 NH 351, 352 (222 A2d 205, 207).
I am convinced our Supreme Court, for the same compelling reasons that have influenced courts in *681numerous jurisdictions to abandon lex loci, will reach the same conclusion when given an opportunity to do so.
I conceive it our duty to decide this case as we confidently believe the Supreme Court would decide it.1
*682“We must determine with the best exercise of our mental powers of which we are capable that law which in all probability will be applied to these litigants or to others similarly situated. * * *
*683“The measure of [a lower court’s] duty is to divine, as best it can, what would be the event of an appeal in the case before it.” [Quotations from opinions of Judges Clark and Hand in Spector Motor Service, Inc., v. Walsh, supra, footnote 1, pp 814, 823.] *684We should, of course, be most circumspect in our analysis before concluding a previously declared rule of law would no longer be followed today. We may not properly intrude on the Supreme Court’s function or subtly inject a personal view in attempted replacement of governing law. But where the evidence is overwhelming, as here, that a rule previously announced would no longer be followed, our duty to the litigants requires us to act on that conviction, acknowledging, as we do so, that we have been declared wrong before.
There are substantial reasons why we should not await a formal overruling declaration from our Supreme Court. The litigant whose cause is defeated by application of a rule of law predictably obsolete may not have the wherewithal to carry the struggle further. The Supreme Court may decline to grant leave to appeal for reasons unconnected with its view of the meritorious question.2 I think it fairer to *685the litigants in this case, and to those other litigants whose eases now may be pending in the trial courts ' of this State and in the Federal courts, governed in diversity eases by the rule of Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins (1938), 304 US 64 (58 S Ct 817, 82 L Ed 1188, 114 ALR 1487), who look to the decisions of our Court as well as those of the Supreme Court of Michigan for guidance concerning governing law, to decide this case as we are convinced the Supreme Court of Michigan would decide it.3
*6862.
Although convinced that the Michigan Supreme Court would not choose the law’ of Ontario (the lex loci), I think it far from clear it would necessarily apply New York law in preference to Michigan law. Even though the fatal journey commenced in New York, and thus, in a sense, the guest-passenger relationship was there created, to exalt that factor to the exclusion of all others would be to return to Professor Beale’s vested rights approach to choice-of-law problems, substituting lex loci relationis or a kind of lex loci contractus for lex loci delicti. The cases that have abandoned lex loci emphasize the importance of examining all relevant factors, all significant contracts, not just one, in resolving choice-of-law problems.4
*687Here, the relationship is not centered in either Michigan or New York; the plaintiffs are domiciliarles of New York, bnt the defendant driver and the defendant corporate owner of the car are domiciled in Michigan. Whether Michigan should choose its own law in preference to New York’s depends on considerations inadequately covered by the summary judgment record on which this case comes to us,5 and not fully developed in the briefs.
*6883.
There is no need to consider whether New York’s law should be applied in preference to Michigan’s until it is first determined that there is a difference between the laws of the two States. See Traynor, Is This Conflict Really Necessary?, 37 Tex L Rev 657 (1959). And we cannot determine whether there is a difference without first determining the law that each of the two States would apply in resolving this controversy.
In choosing New York’s law in preference to Michigan’s, the majority, of necessity, proceed on the supposition that there is a difference between the law of the two States — that Michigan law requires a guest passenger to prove gross negligence and New York law does not. That supposition, in turn, is based on the assumption that Michigan’s owner liability statute and its guest-passenger amendment6 operate extraterritorially.
At the times the owner liability statute was enacted (PA 1915, No 302, §29 [CL 1915, §4825]) and its guest-passenger amendment was added (PA 1929, No 19 [CL 1948, § 256.29 (Stat Ann § 9.1446)]), the universal rule was that all matters relating to a right of action for personal injury brought in one jurisdiction for a tort committed in another were governed by the law of the place of injury.7 That *689being tbe conceptual setting at the time of enactment, it seems to me anomalous to interpret our owner liability statute and its guest passenger amendment as having extraterritorial effect, to impute to the legislature the intention to make the statute operate extraterritorially8 even though, when enacted, all courts, including Michigan’s,9 applied the lex loci, and refused to apply any other law, common or statutory, in determining the standard of care owed a guest passenger.
*6904.
If, as suggested by this opinion, Michigan’s owner liability statute does not apply extraterritorially, then, in determining the Michigan law (the lex fori) applicable in a case not governed by the statute, it would be necessary to consider and decide as common-law questions both the extent of the owner’s vicarious liability10 and whether a different standard of care applies when the injured person is a guest passenger.11 "We might well conclude that our common law permits a guest passenger to recover from both a vicariously liable owner and the driver upon showing ordinary negligence. If that be the decision, then there would be no difference between the law of Michigan and New York and, thus, no need to make a choice of law on that issue,12 once it is de-*691cidecl Ontario’s law (the law of the place of injury) does not control decision.
If Michigan’s owner liability statute operates ex-traterritorially, there remains a substantial question whether we should not apply, in a suit in this forum against a Michigan driver and a Michigan owner, the policy expressed in Michigan’s “extraterritorial statute.” Their expectations and their insurer’s expectations may be thought superior to New York’s interest in protecting its guest passenger domiciliarles.13 Courts which have adopted the substantial contacts *692approach have held that the law of the forum presumptively applies until it has been shown that because of some special relationship or consideration the nonforum contacts have greater significance.14
The New Hampshire and Wisconsin supreme courts have declared that the forum should try to select the law which reaches the soundest result:
“We prefer to apply the better rule of law in conflicts cases just as is done in nonconflicts cases, when the choice is open to us. If the law of some other state is outmoded, an unrepealed remnant of a bygone age, ‘a drag on the coattails of civilization,’ (Freund, Chief Justice Stone and the Conflict of Laws, 59 Harv L Rev 1210, 1216 [1946]), we will try to see our way clear to apply our own law instead. If it is our own law that is obsolete or senseless (and it could be) we will try to apply the other state’s law. Courts have always done this in conflicts cases, but have usually covered up what they have done by employing manipulative techniques such as characterization and renvoi.” Clark v. Clark (1966), 107 NH 351, 355 (222 A 205, 209).
Accord: Heath v. Zellmer (1967), 35 Wis 2d 578 (151 NW2d 664, 673).
A commentator recently suggested that the effort to achieve the result attainable under the “better *693law” explains some of the conflict found in the host-guest conflict cases.15 Perhaps that is what we should try to accomplish in this ease, hut on the present summary judgment record I see neither need for decision nor basis for an informed decision thereon.

 See Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. Walsh (CA2, 1943), 139 P2d 809, 814, remanded on other grounds Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin (1944), 323 US 101 (65 S Ct 152, 89 L Ed 101), where, speaking for a majority of the second circuit panel, Judge Clark wrote:
“If that were the whole story or if further our duty were limited to picking the closest unoverruled analogy in reported cases and following that blindly and mechanically, we should hold that these cases, and particularly the Alpha Cement case, had foreclosed all further discussion. But that is far from the whole story; the trends noted above have gone further in several specific eases fundamentally close to this and in divisions in the [United States Supreme] Court itself, which are certainly not without significance in forecasting the future eourse of the law. And our function eannot be limited to a mere blind adherence to precedent. We must determine with the best exercise of our mental powers of which we are capable that law which in all probability will be applied to these litigants or to others similarly situated. If this means the discovering and applying of a ‘new doctrinal trend’ in the Court, Perkins v. Endicott Johnson Corp. (CA2), 128 F2d 208, 217, 218, affirmed 317 US 501 (63 S Ct 339, 87 L ed 424), this is our task to be performed direetly and straightforwardly, rather than ‘artfully’ dodged. The Attitude of Lower Courts to Changing Precedents, 50 Yale L J 1448, 1459. As was said recently with rare prescience by Judge Parker in the controversial issue as to the constitutionality of the required flag salute: ‘Under such cireumstanees and believing, as we do, that the flag salute here required is violative of religious liberty when required of persons holding the religious views of plaintiffs, we feel that we would be recreant to our duty as judges, if through a blind following of a decision which the Supreme Court itself has thus impaired as an authority, we should deny protection to rights which we regard as among the most sacred of those protected by constitutional guaranties.’ Barnette v. West Virginia State Board of Education (DC SD W Va), 47 F Supp 251, 253, affirmed 319 US 624 (63 S Ct 1178, 87 L ed 1628).” (Emphasis supplied.)
While disagreeing with the majority’s prediction of how the United States Supreme Court would decide the ease there presented, Judge Learned Hand in dissent nevertheless expressed his agreement with the foregoing quoted statement, when he said (p 823) :
“It is always embarrassing for a lower court to say whether the time has come to disregard decisions of a higher court, not yet explicitly overruled, because they parallel others in which the higher court has expressed a contrary view. I agree that one should not *682wait for formal retraetion in the face of changes plainly foreshadowed; the higher court may not entertain an appeal in the ease before the lower court, or the parties may not ehoose to appeal. In either event the actual decision will be one which the judges do not believe to be that whieh the higher court would 'make. But nothing has yet appeared which -satisfies me that the case at bar is of that kind; and, as I have said, I can see no good reason for making any distinction between one kind of federal activity and another. The way out is in quite another direction, and includes both. Nor is it desirable for a lower court to embrace the exhilarating opportunity of anticipating a doctrine whieh may be in the womb of time, but whose birth is distant; on the contrary I conceive that the measure of its duty is to divine, as best it can, what would be the event of an appeal in the ease before it.” (Emphasis supplied.)
See, also, Putman v. Erie City Manufacturing Company (CA5, 1964), 338 F2d 911, 921, 923, where Judge Wisdom wrote:
“The Erie problem this case presents is troublesome, but is not as troublesome as the problem that confronted the First Circuit in Mason v. American Emery Wheel Works, (CA1, 1957), 241 F2d 906. In that ease the plaintiff, an employee of a subvendee of the defendant manufacturer, was injured when an emery wheel disintegrated. Mississippi law controlled. The supreme court of Mississippi had unequivocally held in Ford Motor Co. v. Myers (1928), 151 Miss 73 (117 So 362), and in a number of earlier cases, that privity was a prerequisite to recovery against a manufacturer. Nevertheless, basing its decision on a dictum in a later case and the evident trend in other states started by MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co. [(1916), 217 NY 382 (111 NE 1050, LRA 1916F 696, Ann Cas 1916C 440)], the court dispensed with the necessity of privity * * *
“This Court has the same deference for the Texas supreme court that Judge Magruder had for the Mississippi supreme court in Mason v. American Emery Wheel Works. Echoing Judge Magruder [241 F2d 906, 909], we conclude that it would be 'gratuitous and unwarranted’ to assume that the forward-looking supreme court of Texas, which in Decker [Jacob E. Decker & Sons, Inc., v. Capps (1942), 139 Tex 609 (164 SW2d 828, 142 ALR 1479)] was one of the leaders in the assault on the citadel of privity, would now hold that privity is required in nonfood eases, 'when we bear in mind the readiness of other courts, in conservative jurisdictions at that, to overrule their earlier holdings and to bring their jurisprudence into accord with what is now the overwhelming weight of authority’.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Similarly, see Necaise v. Chrysler Corporation (CA5, 1964), 335 F2d 562, 572, 573:
*683“It is difficult for us to conclude that the supreme eourt of Mississippi would now hold that a defective automobile is not a dangerous instrumentality per se.” (Emphasis supplied by the court.)
See, also, Judge Woodbury’s dissenting opinion in United States v. Girouard (CA1, 1945), 149 F2d 760, reversed 328 US 61 (66 S Ct 826, 90 L Ed 1084); Picard v. United Aircraft Corporation (CA2, 1942), 128 F2d 632, 636; S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc. v. Palmieri (CA1, 1958), 260 F2d 88; Maxfield v. Denver and R. G. W. R. Co. (1958), 8 Utah 2d 183 (330 P2d 1018); Watts v. Pioneer Corn Company, Inc. (CA7, 1965), 343 F2d 617; Gardella v. Chandler (CA2, 1949), 172 F2d 402, 409, Judge Frank’s opinion.
The reader will observe that the eases cited in this footnote can by and large be distinguished from the ease at bar on the ground that the changes in controlling law dealt with in the cited cases either were foreshadowed by other opinions of the highest Court itself or concerned the law of another jurisdiction (i.e., conflict of laws or Federal diversity eases), in which latter situations there was no way of obtaining the opinion of the Court with the final say on the deeisional trends adopted in some of the cited eases. The noted distinction although valid, in my opinion weakens only the authority, not the persuasiveness of the analysis in the cited cases.
Compare opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter concurring in Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Company of America (1956), 350 US 198, 209, 210 (76 S Ct 273, 280, 100 L Ed 199):
“For the mere fact that Vermont in 1910 restated its old law against denying equitable relief for breach of a promise to arbitrate a contract made under such Vermont law, is hardly a conclusive ground for attributing to the Vermont Supreme Court application of this equitable doctrine in 1956 to a contract made in New York with explicit agreement by the parties that the law of New York which allows sueh a stay as was here sought, New York civil practice act, § 1451, should govern. Cf. Brown v. Perry, 104 Vt 66 (156 A 910, 77 ALR 1294). Law does change with times and circumstances, and not merely through legislative reforms. It is also to be noted that law is not restricted to what is found in Law Reports, or otherwise written. See Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Browning (1940), 310 US 362, 369 (60 S Ct 968, 84 L ed 1254). The Supreme Court of Vermont last spoke on this matter in 1910. The doctrine that it referred to was not a peculiar indigenous Vermont rule. The attitude refleeted by that decision nearly half a century ago was the current traditional judicial hostility against ousting courts, as the phrase ran, of their jurisdiction.”
Likewise here. The Michigan Supreme Court did not invent lex loci delicti. It was adopted in Michigan, without consideration of *684its desirability, beeause it represented the generally accepted rule of law for deciding choice of law questions in tort cases. It would have been unique to have then adopted any other rule, just as today it would be unique to continue to adhere to the old rule.
To the extent Kaiser v. North (1939), 292 Mich 49, reflects a policy decision on the part of the Supreme Court to adopt the then prevalent conflict-of-laws rule, we would be applying that policy were we to adopt, as I would, the new approach to choice of law problems adopted by so many other jurisdictions.
The fairly recent Michigan Supreme Court decisions reiterating the old rule can be explained by the failure of counsel to raise the question whether the old rule should continue to govern, which in turn may be explained by the fact nothing may have turned in those cases on selection of one law rather than another or uncertainty, as here, what law would be selected if the old rule were abandoned.

 “It is time to remind again, as Justice Holmes did for the Court in United States v. Garner (1923), 260 US 482, 490 (43 S Ct 181, 67 L ed 361) that 'The denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case, as the bar has been told many times’, and that this Court has formally adopted that reminder as expressive of its policy and attitude toward the effect of orders denying leave to appeal.” Frishett v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (1967), 378 Mich 733, approving our Court’s reversal of a summary judgment. The per curiam opinion of the Supreme Court observed (see footnote 5) *685that a trial “will provide a much better footing for determination of the posed question of law.”

 Compare Rodebaugh v. Grand Trunk W. R. Co. (1966), 4 Mich App 559, limiting a rule of law enunciated a number of years ago by the Michigan Supreme Court.
See Comment: The attitude of Lower Courts to Changing Precedents, 50 Yale L J 1448 (1941).
A view differing with the one expressed in this opinion is ably presented in Kelman, The Force of Precedent in the Lower Courts, 14 Wayne L Rev 3, 10 (1967).
Trial and intermediate appellate court judges are daily engaged in announcing new rules of law, either because the question is new or thought to be now, or because they must choose among conflicting high eourt precedents, or because they discern a “distinction”, all of which is perceptively recognized and well illustrated in Professor Kelman’s article.
The trial judge’s power to find the facts in cases tried without a jury, rule on evidentiary questions, control the course of proceedings, grant motions for a new trial, the sentencing power, etc., and our Court’s power to grant or deny leave to appeal, have much greater impact on the law than will the relatively rare decision of a lower court tribunal stating forthrightly it is convinced, on the basis of substantial evidence, that a previously declared rule of law would no longer be followed by the Supreme Court.
JSTo judicial action is more viable than a judge’s ruling on a question of law, unlike decisions on the countless discretionary matters which in most eases have low viability, if any viability at all. Our Court sits in panels of 3, the agreement of 2 is required to take any aetion, and presumably all 3 judges would be in agreement, as all 3 of us are in this case on the meritorious question, if the evidence that the Supreme Court would no longer adhere to a previously declared rule of law' is clear enough to warrant the degree of conviction on our part which alone would justify us in acting thereon. If the conviction on which we act is unjustified, the Supreme Court is not without remedy.
There need be little concern that lower court judges wall proceed other than with great circumspection when addressing themselves *686to a presented question of the continued viability of high court established precedent.

 See, e.g., Heath v. Zellmer (1967), 35 Wis 2d 578 (151 NW2d 664), and Zellinger v. State Sand & Gravel Co. (1968), 38 Wis 2d 98 (156 NW2d 466).
Kuchinic v. McCrory (1966), 422 Pa 620 (222 A2d 897), held that Pennsylvania was the State “with the most significant interest in defining the legal consequences attached to the relationship.” In reaching that decision the court mentioned, in addition to the faet the host-guest relationship was established in Pennsylvania, that the relationship was intended to terminate and the domicile of all 4 xiassengers was in Pennsylvania.
In Heath v. Zellmer, supra, the Wisconsin eourt selected its own law in preference to Indiana’s, the latter being the State where the host-guest relationship was established. The court acknowledged that Indiana had substantial contacts; the trip both commenced and was expected to end in Indiana. The ease is ap-Xirovingly discussed in the law review article cited in footnote 15.
In Macey v. Rozbicki (1966), 18 NY2d 289 (274 NYS2d 591, 221 NE2d 380), the host-guest relationship was “created” in Ontario, yet Ontario’s rule denying recovery was not applied in an action between relatives, all New Yorkers. Compare Dym v. Gordon (1965), 16 NY2d 120 (209 NE2d 792, 262 NYS2d 463).
Contrast: Dow v. Larrabee (1966), 107 NH 70 (217 A2d 506), but see Clarke v. Clarke, supra.
The proposed official draft of Restatement, Second, Conflicts of Law, would sum up the state of American law as follows:
“§ 145. The General Principle.
“(1) The rights and liabilities of the parties with respect to an issue in tort are determined by the local law of the state which, *687as to that issue, has the most significant relationship to the occurrence and the parties under the principles stated in section 6.
“(2) Contracts to be taken into account in applying the principles of section 6 to determine the law applicable to an issue include:
“(a) the plaee where the injury occurred,
“(b) the plaee where the conduct causing the injury occurred,
“(c) the domieil, residence, nationality, plaee of incorporation and place of business of the parties, and
“(d) the plaee where the relationship, if any, between the parties is centered.
“These contacts are to be evaluated aeeording to their relative importance with respect to the particular issue.” Restatement, Second, Conflict of Laws, proposed official draft, Pt II.
“§ 6. Choice of Law Principles.
“(1) A court, subject to constitutional restrictions, will follow a statutory directive of its own state on ehoice of law.
“(2) When there is no such directive, the factors relevant to the choice of the applicable rule of law include
“(a) the needs of the interstate and international systems,
“(b) the relevant policies of the forum,
“(c) the relevant policies of other interested states and the relative interests of those states in the determination of the particular issue,
“(d) the protection of justified expectations,
“(e) the basic policies underlying the particular field of law,
“(f) certainty, predictability and uniformity of result, and
“(g) ease in the determination and application of the law to be applied.” Restatement, Second, Conflict of Laws, proposed official draft, Pt I.

 “Reversal of this summary judgment will doubtless bring about a trial of plaintiff’s allegations, the record of winch will provide a much tetter footing for determination of the posed question of law. Summary judgment, for the reason assigned by defendant, should not have been granted. Rather the question should have been reserved for consideration on motion for peremptory instruction or directed verdict.” (Emphasis supplied.) Frishett v. State Farm Mutual Auto-motile Insurance Company, supra.

CLS 1961, § 257.401 (Stat Ann 1960 Rev §9.2101).

 ll Am Jur, Conflict of Laws, §182, p 490; Restatement, Conflicts of Law, § 378, et seq. Later, owners were sometimes held vicariously liable based on statutes other than that of the plaee of injury by characterizing the owner’s actions outside the state of injury as consent to the application of whatever law it was sought to apply; these cases are discussed in Ehrenzweig, Part II, p 794, infra, footnote 11.
If Michigan’s statute applied extraterritorially it must have so applied in 1915 and 1929. It is incongruous to say that the statute applies extraterritorially and also to say, because of Kaiser v. North (1939), 292 Mich 49, we must apply only the law of the plaee of injury.
*689Kaiser can be read as holding that the owner liability statute is not effective extraterritorially. See footnote on p 53 and the following (p 54): “Neither our constitutional laws nor our statutory laws are of extraterritorial force as applied to a ease of this character.”

 “Unless the intention to have a statute operate beyond the limits of the state or country is clearly expressed or indicated by its language, purpose, subject matter, or history, no legislation is presumed to be intended to operate outside the territorial jurisdiction of the state or country enaeting it. To the contrary, the presumption is that the statute is intended to have no extraterritorial effect, but to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the state or country enaeting it, and it is generally so construed. An extraterritorial effect is not to be given statutes by implication. Accordingly, a statute is prima facie operative only as to persons or things within the territorial jurisdiction of the lawmaking power whieh enacted it.” 50 Am Jur, Statutes, § 487, pp 510, 511.
In 1936 New York’s Court of Appeals held its owner liability statute “has no extraterritorial effect.” Cherwien v. Geiter (1936), 272 NY 165 (5 NE2d 185). In 1967, it overruled its earlier holding. Farber v. Smolak (1967), 20 NY2d 198 (229 NE2d 36). Thus, there is precedent for breathing extraterritoriality into our (at time of enactment) local statute, but, on principle as well as authority, New York’s 1967 decision is not persuasive. The 1967 New York decision did not consider or attempt to explain how a statute construed to be without extraterritorial application at the time of enactment could be held to operate extraterritorially by the passage of time.
See, also, footnote 7. Compare Kernan v. Webb (1929), 50 RI 394 (148 A 186), and Masci v. Young (1932), 109 NJL 453 (162 A 623), affirmed Young v. Masci (1933), 289 US 253, 258 (53 S Ct 599, 77 L Ed 1158, 88 ALR 170), regarding vicarious liability of nonresidents when lex loci delicti was the universal rule. See, also, Restatement of the Law, Conflicts of Law, § 387, p 384(2), 11 Am Jur, Conflicts of Law, § 182, p 492, n 10, and 8 Am Jur 2d, Automobiles and Highway Traffic, § 601, p 153.

 See Slayton v. Boesch (1946), 315 Mich 1.

 See 8 Am Jur 2d, Automobiles and Highway Traffic, §§ 571-594, pp 122-149.
See, also, Prosser, Law of Torts (3d ed), pp 494-499. Professor Prosser states Florida has gone further than any other jurisdiction in extending common law liability, making the owner liable for any negligent driving by another on the theory that an automobile is a “dangerous instrumentality.” See, also, Harper and James, The Law of Torts, § 26.10, p Í394, commenting on both the Florida rule of law and an insurance aspect of the matter.

 8 Am Jur 2d, Automobiles and Highway Traffic, § 469, pp 33, 34.
See, also, Ciarle v. Ciarle, supra, where the court observed: “No American state has newly adopted a guest statute for many years. Courts of states which did adopt them are today construing them much more narrowly, evidencing their dissatisfaction with them. Pedrick, Taken for a Ride: The Automobile Guest and Assumption of Risk, 22 La L Rev 90 (1961) ; Comment, The Ohio Guest Statute, 22 Ohio St L J 629 (1961). Though still on the books, they contradict the spirit of the times.” 107 NH 351, 357 (222 A2d 205, 210). Similarly, see Heath v. Zellmer, supra, p 603.
Professor Ehrenzweig has eolleeted and classified both the guest passenger and vicarious liability conflict of laws cases, and has suggested that (p 991) “lex fori supplemented by a test of reasonable insurability emerges as the rationally applicable law.” See Ehren-zweig, Guest Statutes in the Conflict of Laws — Towards a Theory of Enterprise Liability under ‘Foreseeable and Insurable Laws’: I, 69 Tale L J 595 (1960); Ehrenzweig, Vicarious Liability in the Conflict of Laws — Toward a Theory of Enterprise Liability under ‘Foreseeable and Insurable Laws’: III, 69 Tale L J 978 (I960).

 However, a conflict of laws issue could arise in regard to the owner’s vicarious liability. In Farber v. Smolak, supra (see foot*691note 8), New York’s Court of Appeals achieved the result it desired to reach, namely, the automobile owner should be held vicariously liable in respect to the outstate accident as under New York’s owner liability statute, by overruling its earlier decision in Cherwein v. Getter, supra. The same result could have been achieved by declaring that under the forum’s common law (applicable to those eases governed by New York law but until Farter v. Smolak not governed by its owner liability statute) the owner was vicariously liable on eommon-law principles (see footnote 10, supra).
If, as appears to be the ease (see law review articles cited in footnotes 14 and 15 and eases cited in footnote 11), the courts are seeking means of avoiding the operation of the guest statutes and retaining the owner’s vicarious liability, it would be simpler in many eases to develop the forum’s common law rather than to go around Robin Hood’s barn, turning the matter into a choice-of-law question and reconstruing the owner liability and guest-passenger statutes, which, when enacted, could only have been concerned with intrastate accidents. The difficulty with making it a ehoiee of law question is revealed by the cases where this has been done: The solution worked out in the first case frequently does not serve well as cases with different facets come to decision (see law review articles cited in footnotes 14 and 15).
The courts are making new law when they reeonstrue their statutory law or choose a foreign law to achieve the desired result; they would beeome no more involved in the law-making process, and in a sense less so, were they simply to reformulate the eommon-law rules regarding the owner’s vicarious liability and the standard of care owed a guest passenger as applied to outstate accidents so as to achieve the same results attained by “choosing” foreign law or by reinterpreting local and foreign statutes.
The approach suggested would not eliminate choice-of-law problems when a contact State’s law is different than the forum’s, but it would eliminate the impetus for reinterpretation of owner-liability and guest-passenger statutes passed long ago and it would eliminate the choice-of-law problem in those eases where the common law of the forum as so formulated is the same as the applicable law of all other contact States.

 Compare Heath v. Zellmer, supra, 596, and Zellinger v. State Sand & Gravel Co., supra.

 Wilcox v. Wilcox (1965), 26 Wis 2d 617 (133 NW2d 408); Kell v. Henderson (1966), 26 App Div 2d 595 (270 NYS2d 552), holding that New York’s law rather than Ontario’s governs a lawsuit between persons who were residents and domiciliarios of Ontario arising out of a New York accident (discussed by Rosenberg, Two Views on Kell v. Henderson: An Opinion for the New York Court of Appeals, 67 Colum L Rev 459 (1967), and by Trautman, A Comment, 67 Colum L Rev 465 (1967), and in article cited in footnote 15, infra). See, also, footnote 4, Traynor, op cit, p 674, and Ehrenzweig, op cit.
Compare Reich v. Purcell (1967), 67 Cal 2d 551 (63 Cal Rptr 31, 432 P2d 727), a wrongful death action, choosing Ohio law (residence of decedents and survivors) over Missouri (place of injury) and California (forum and defendant’s residence) ; similarly, see Tramontana v. S. A. Empresa De Viacao Aerea Bio Grandense (CA DC, 1965), 350 E2d 468.

 See footnote 12. See, also, Ehrenzweig, Foreign Guest Statute and Forum Accidents: Against the Desperanto of State “Interests”, 68 Colum L Rev 49, 54 (1968).