Court Opinion

ID: 9859157
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 18:58:07.521524+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:06:59.793090
License: Public Domain

McKUSICK, Chief Justice
with whom SCOLNIK, Justice, joins, dissenting.
I would affirm the Superior Court’s dismissal of this malpractice action.
My disagreement with the court’s opinion involves a narrow and specific question: Did the Superior Court commit clear error in its factual conclusion, arrived at after a testimonial hearing, that Dr. Aaron continued through November 8, 1982,1 to maintain his residence or domicil2 in Maine? I recognize that the evidence presented to the hearing justice might have supported a factual finding that Dr. Aaron had become a domiciliary of Florida, but, on the other hand, the evidence at least equally well supported the justice’s factual conclusion that Dr. Aaron had never abandoned his long-time domicil in the state of Maine. Most certainly, in light of the conflicting evidence he received on the factual issue, the hearing justice was not compelled to find that Dr. Aaron had moved his domicil to Florida before November 9, 1982. In this situation we cannot say that the justice’s finding was clearly erroneous. See Harmon v. Emerson, 425 A.2d 978, 982 (Me.1981).
Among the evidentiary circumstances that support the hearing justice’s finding that Dr. Aaron’s domicil remained in Maine until after November 8, 1982, are the following facts. Dr. Aaron had practiced dentistry in Saco, Maine, for many years, maintaining his home at Fortunes Rock in Biddeford, Maine. In 1980 he went to Florida for the winter, returning to practice dentistry in Saco part time from April 1981 to October 1981. In the winter of 1981-82 he again went to Florida, and again the next spring returned to practice dentistry at the Sweetser Children’s Home in Saco until time to return to the South in October 1982. At all times he maintained his Fortunes Rock home and physically lived there except for the winter months in Florida. When he was in the South, he left a Florida address for forwarding mail to him from Maine. There is no evidence that Dr. Aaron practiced his profession at all during his winter sojourns in Florida. These subsidiary evidentiary facts add up to highly competent evidence from which the justice charged with the factfinding responsibility was well justified in reaching his ultimate factual conclusion that Dr. Aaron had not changed his domicil out of Maine on or before November 8, 1982. See “Special Note on Evidence for Establishment of a Domicil of Choice,” Restatement (Second) *1295of Conflict of Laws following § 20, at 81-83 (1971).
Notwithstanding the hearing justice’s finding as to Dr. Aaron’s domicil, the court’s opinion points to certain evidence that would justify a contrary factual conclusion. The recited evidence, however, far from compelling a finding of change of domicil, could properly be considered by the hearing justice to be outweighed by the evidence of the continuation of Dr. Aaron’s strong and longstanding ties to Maine. Dr. Aaron bought his second home several years before he started spending his whole winter in Florida. While he registered to vote in Florida in 1982, there is no clear evidence that he in fact ever voted there prior to November 9, 1982, even though he may have voted in Florida after that date. Although Dr. Aaron testified that he thought that once he registered to vote in Florida he became a Florida resident, it was within the province of the justice who heard his testimony to assess whether Dr. Aaron’s actions spoke louder than his words.3 Id. at 82. I cannot agree with the court’s declaration that, just because Dr. Aaron testified that he assumed he became a “resident of Florida” upon registering to vote in that state, there is in this record no conflicting evidence of Dr. Aaron’s domiciliary intent. Testimony by the person whose domicil is the subject of judicial determination, even though admissible and sometimes highly persuasive, is never conclusive as to his intent. Id. The objective evidence presented to the Superior Court justice persuaded him by a preponderance that the mere registration to vote in another state did not change Dr. Aaron’s Maine domicil, regardless what Dr. Aaron thought the consequence was. On the testimonial record before the trial court, no appellate court can say that that finding was error, let alone clear error.
The case at bar presents us with a situation radically different from that involved in our recent decision of Patten v. Milam, 480 A.2d 774 (Me.1984). First, the trial court in Patten decided the residence question solely on the basis of the affidavit of the defendant doctor, id. at 776; whereas here the trial court heard extensive oral testimony about Dr. Aaron’s goings and comings between Maine and Florida. Second, the Patten decision in the trial court was rendered against the defendant doctor, who had the burden of proof to show that the statute of limitations was not tolled, and on appeal we held that the doctor’s affidavit did not compel a finding of fact that he still had his domicil in Maine. Id. In contrast, here the trial court’s finding of fact was in favor of the defendant doctor; the trial court was persuaded that the entire evidence satisfied the doctor’s burden of showing that the statute of limitations had not been tolled, and certainly the record does not compel us to disagree.
Finally, examination of the record contradicts the statement of the court’s opinion that the present case is factually similar to Patten. Dr. Milam, the defendant in Patten, was a full-time, active practitioner who moved the situs of his medical practice from Maine to Texas in November 1978. His family followed him to Texas after the end of the 1978-79 school year, and he actually voted and registered his car in Texas. He first rented and then purchased' a home in Texas, and although he did not sell his Maine house until 1983, there is no suggestion in the Patten opinion that he ever occupied it for any appreciable time after his family joined him in Texas. In contrast to Dr. Milam, Dr. Aaron never moved his dental practice out of Maine and he never gave up physical occupancy of his long-time home at Fortunes Rock for more than the winter months. Patten is no au*1296thority for the court’s decision in the case at bar.
The function of this court in regard to a trial court’s finding of fact is strictly limited to reviewing it for any clear error. M.R.Civ.P. 52(a). On the record before us, the hearing justice made no clear error, if any error at all, in finding that Dr. Aaron remained domiciled in Maine at least through November 8, 1982. I would affirm.

. November 8, 1982, is the critical date because the two-year statute of limitations applicable to medical malpractice actions, 14 M.R.S.A. § 753 (1980), expired on that day. If the statute of limitations was not tolled by Dr. Aaron’s being both absent from Maine and a resident elsewhere on and before that date, the notice of claim, which was not served upon him until July 7, 1983, was not served within the period of limitations and therefore the Superior Court properly dismissed this malpractice action under the authority of Givertz v. Maine Medical Center, 459 A.2d 548, 554 (Me.1983).

. Under 14 M.R.S.A. § 866 (1980), the residence outside of Maine that will, conjunctively with absence, toll the statute of limitations must be the equivalent of domicil, because as held in Connolly v. Serunian, 138 Me. 80, 84, 21 A.2d 830, 832 (1941), "such a residence must be in one place.” Thus the terms "residence" and “domicil” will be used interchangeably in this opinion.

. As it turns out, that particular testimony by Dr. Aaron is adverse to the position taken by Dr. Aaron’s attorneys on the present tolling question; nonetheless, it was for the hearing justice to decide whether Dr. Aaron in testifying realized that particular adverse effect of his testimony and whether Dr. Aaron was motivated by tax or other considerations in registering to vote in Florida on March 15, 1982.