Court Opinion

ID: 9667410
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:45:05.259349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:37.729941
License: Public Domain

TODD, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I would extend the Milkovich doctrine to include procedural issues. The third of the five choice-influencing considerations adopted in Milkovich is “simplification of the judicial task.” 295 Minn. at 161, 203 N.W.2d at 412. That consideration embodies the raison d’etre of the lex fori doctrine and its application will serve the purposes formerly served by the common-law rule. But there are stronger reasons for extending the Milkovich methodology to all conflict-of-law questions. Rules of law do not fall neatly on either side of the substantive-procedural line. They impact in varying degrees upon the rights of the parties involved, and indirectly, upon the governmental interests at stake. The five choice-influencing considerations effectively take into account these various private and public interests and prevent the automatic application of forum law as if rules of procedure had no effect whatsoever on these interests. “There are outcome-affecting extrastate rules, phrased procedurally, that a court can apply as easily as it can apply its own rules. As to such rules, a hard-and-fast procedural characterization leading inevitably to application of forum law is wrong.” R. Leflar, American Conflicts Law § 121, at 240 (3d ed. 1977). Further support of this view also comes from Professor Leflar, to whom we are indebted for first proposing the principles of law adopted in Milkovich v. Saari, 295 Minn. 155, 203 N.W. 408 (1973). He states: *154“Rules asserted to be procedural for conflicts purposes ought to be analyzed, in their factual contexts, in terms of the relevant choice-influencing considerations, just as rigorously as other rules of law are analyzed in their own contexts in terms of the considerations." R. Leflar, American Conflicts Law § 121, at 240 (3d ed. 1977).