Court Opinion

ID: 9645528
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:27:51.470241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:29.195579
License: Public Domain

MAUZY, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the court's result; however, I respectfully submit that the time *17has come to abolish the legal myth of inter-spousal immunity. The interspousal immunity rule is a “creature of the common law that resulted exclusively from judicial decisions.” Boblitz v. Boblitz, 296 Md. 242, 462 A.2d 506, 507 (1983). The rule, as described by Blackstone, is as follows:
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything; and is therefore called in our law-french a feme-covert, foemina viro co-operta; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture. Upon this principle, of a union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities, that either of them acquire by the marriage.
* * * * * *
If the wife be injured in her person or her property, she can bring no action for redress without her husband’s concurrence, and in his name, as well as her own: neither can she be sued without making the husband a defendant.
1 W. BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES, Ch. 15, p. 442-443 (emphasis original).
By 1983, some twenty-eight jurisdictions had fully abrogated the rule of interspousal immunity; at least ten jurisdictions had abolished the rule, in part, as to all or some torts; one jurisdiction allowed a cause of action between spouses but because of conflicting statutes, provides no remedy. See Boblitz v. Boblitz, 462 A.2d at 522-524.
The rule emanates from English common law, under which women were chattels. Such a rule has no basis in 20th century reason and should be abolished.
The doctrine of interspousal immunity is more aptly termed “a rule in derogation of married women.” Boblitz v. Boblitz, 462 A.2d at 507. Undoubtedly, the doctrine’s time has come and gone.
GONZALEZ, JJ., joins in this concurring opinion.