Court Opinion

ID: 9637693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:15:47.567954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:59.160494
License: Public Domain

McCORD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Of course, I agree that the lex fori controls as to all matters pertaining to remedial and procedural, as distinguished from substantive rights. How and where to draw the line of precise classification is not always easy to determine. Pritchard v. Norton, 106 U.S. 124, 1 S.Ct. 102, 27 L.Ed. 104.
I am unable to agree with the holding that the right to sue the insurance company directly under Louisiana law is merely procedural. The contract of insurance was issued in Louisiana, covering a resident of Louisiana, and the accident giving rise to these actions occurred in Louisiana. Under the law of Louisiana, the place where the contract was issued, where the tort was committed, and where the obligations and liabilities of the parties arose,, a party .who has been injured has a right of direct action against the insurance carrier within the terms and limits of the policy. The effect of the statutory provision is that “the policy has become one of liability, rather than one of indemnity, and an injured claimant has been given the right to proceed directly against the insurer and recover from it whatever benefits the provisions, terms, and conditions, of the policy contract afford him”. Graham v. American Employers’ Ins. Co., La.App., 171 So. 471, 476; Ruiz v. Clancy, 182 La. 935, 162 So. 734; Rambin v. Southern Sales Company, La.App., 145 So. 46. The statement in the Graham case that the right to sue the insurer is “procedural in. nature”, was made, not in connection with a conflict of laws problem, but with a situation where an unwarranted extension of coverage was being sought.
The right to proceed directly against an insurance company is not against the public policy of Texas, and I think we have the right to determine for ourselves whether the right given by the Louisiana statute is a substantive one, enforceable in the Federal Court sitting in Texas. Restatement, Conflict of Laws, p. 486. I am of opinion that on the facts of this case the governing principles of conflict of laws require that we determine the right to be a substantive one. I do not think that a mere stepping across state lines from Louisiana to Texas should defeat appellants’ right to sue and hold the insurance company; a right they admittedly had if the actions had been instituted in the Federal Court *318sitting in Louisiana. See Burkett v. Globe Indemnity Co., 182 Miss. 423, 181 So. 316; and the dissenting opinion of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi in McArthur v. Maryland Casualty Co., 184 Miss. 663, 690, 186 So. 305, 310, 120 A.L.R. 846, which dissent, in my opinion, states what the law is and ought to be in cases of this kind.
I respectfully dissent.