Court Opinion

ID: 9726912
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:12:13.558003+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:14:53.541799
License: Public Domain

Brown, J.
{dissenting). The question of whether a right of action arises from a tort is governed by the law of the jurisdiction in which the tort is committed. Nelson v. American Employers’ Ins. Co. (1951), 258 Wis. 252, 45 N. W. (2d) 681; and Garlin v. Garlin (1951), 260 Wis. 187, 50 N. W. (2d) 373. Sec. 1-106, Arizona Code, Anno. 1939, provides that the common law is the rule of decision in all courts of the state. The Arizona courts have construed this to mean that the common law, unless changed by statute, is the rule the courts must follow. “At common law, a tort committed by one spouse against the person or character of *20the other does not give rise to a cause of action in favor of the injured spouse.” 27 Am. Jur., Husband and Wife, p. 191, sec. 589. No Arizona statute is cited which abrogates this rule. Sec. 63-303 of the Arizona Code, cited in the majority opinion is inapplicable, for at common law a married man cannot sue his spouse for tort and if, by that statute, a married woman has acquired the same legal rights as a married man she has not thereby acquired a right to sue her spouse in tort in the absence of a statute conferring on married men such rights to sue their spouses. Sec. 63-303, Arizona Code, is not at all the equivalent of sec. 246.07, Wis. Stats., giving a married woman the right to sue as if she were sole.
The statutes cited, authorizing a woman to sue her husband when her separate property is concerned or when the action is between herself and her husband are inapplicable also. If the wife has a cause of action, that cause is property, but if she has no cause of action she has no property, separate or otherwise. The statutes telling what she may do when she has property do not give her property. The property must exist first, before the statutes governing her rights of action in respect to it come into play.
Hageman v. Vanderdoes, 15 Ariz. 312, 138 Pac. 1053, cited in the majority opinion, was a case in which there was an attempt to hold the husband liable to a third person for the voluntary torts of his wife as at common law. The quotation from the opinion is, in turn, a quotation from Martin v. Robson, 65 Ill. 129, 16 Am. Rep. 578, involving the same liability. Both cases held that the statutes giving wives control of their own persons and property removed the reason for holding husbands liable for their wives’ behavior and, by removing the reason, repealed the liability. No question of rights of action by one spouse against the other was before the court, nor does it appear that the court had such a situation in mind when it indulged in the rather rhetorical passage from which an excerpt appears in the majority opinion.
*21Appellants state that no case has reached the Arizona supreme court in which a wife has sued her husband for an injury to her person. Respondent does not dispute it and my own search discovers none. This is not conclusive but is persuasive that in Arizona it is considered that such an action will not lie, — unless one can believe that in Arizona wives are more submissive or attorneys less enterprising than they are in Wisconsin.
I think the demurrer should have been sustained.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Currie concurs in this dissent.