Court Opinion

ID: 9810024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:38:30.22564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:20.142410
License: Public Domain

*55BarNhill, J.,
dissenting: Plaintiff is defendant’s wife. They are residents of Ohio. Their marital status is determined by the law of that State.
The right to compensation for personal injury negligently inflicted is a chose in action; a species of personal property. The situs of the ownership of personal property is the residence of the owner. In this instant it is personal to the plaintiff. In no sense is it located in North Carolina except when and if she comes to this State.
In Ohio the common law fiction of the unity of the person of the husband and wife, with certain modifications, still exists. Plaintiff and defendant are, in the eyes of the law of that State, one person. Upon her marriage her legal existence was merged in that of her husband and she cannot possess or sue upon a claim against him.
So long as she remains there she has no right to compensation on the cause of action alleged. When she came to this State to institute this action she became possessed of this right so soon as she crossed the State line. Having instituted this action and upon her return to Ohio she was divested of the right. When she returns to this State for the trial of this cause she will be revested therewith. When she obtains judgment— if she does — she will have to sue upon it in Ohio so as to be entitled to execution. She will be met at the threshold of that suit by her disability. Thus, in practical effect, she will own nothing. Why is not this permitting our courts to engage in shadow-boxing? In any event, it involves a logic I am unable to follow.
Furthermore, when the action does not involve property located in this State, which is the subject matter of the suit, and all parties are nonresidents, our courts are open to them as a matter of courtesy and not as a matter of right. When the action is so patently an effort to evade the limitations of the law of their State, the courtesy should be denied.
It is true that the action is transitory and, conceding that plaintiff has a cause of action, she may be permitted to maintain her action in the courts of this State. That is not the question here. We are now dealing with plaintiff’s want of capacity to sue her husband due to her disability. Under the law of her State she and her husband are but one and, as against him, she has no legal existence. Plaintiff and defendant being one person, and the plaintiff possessing no legal existence as against the defendant, the Court has no jurisdiction.
I may say that I am not in sympathy with the common law rule. However, we are interested now in applying the law as it is and not as we believe it should be.
WiNBORNE and Seawell, JJ., concur in this opinion.