158 S.E. 101 | N.C. | 1931
This is an action to recover damages for personal injury caused by the alleged negligence of the defendant. The material facts as related by the plaintiff, who is the defendant's wife, are substantially as follows:
In 1928-1929 the plaintiff lived in Roanoke Rapids and taught there in a public school, receiving $1,320 as her compensation for the scholastic year. In the summer of 1929 the defendant attended a summer school in Madison, Wisconsin, and in August he met the plaintiff in Toronto, Canada, for their return by automobile to Roanoke Rapids. The defendant owned the car. The first night they stopped at Olean, N. Y., and on the second day they ate supper at Scranton, Pa. Just before dark they left Scranton and arrived at Dover, N. J., about midnight. The defendant was driving about 40 miles an hour in the residential section of Dover on a paved street in which there were streetcar tracks. A New York-Buffalo bus was in front of his car. He drove down the hill around a sharp curve at the rate of about forty miles an hour. He applied the brakes and struck the car line. The sedan skidded against an electric-light pole and the plaintiff was seriously *576 injured; her nose and her jawbone were broken and her "whole face was a solid bruise." She suffered other injuries and was one week in a hospital in Dover. She had no control over the operation of his car. There was evidence in corroboration. The suit is in tort, the accident occurred in New Jersey, and the defendant has pleaded the laws of that State in bar of recovery.
The actionable quality of the defendant's conduct in inflicting injury upon the plaintiff must be determined by the law of the place where the injury was done; that is, the measure of the defendant's duty and his liability for negligence must be determined by the law of New Jersey. Goodrich on Conflict of Laws, 188; Hancock v. Telegraph Co.,
It may be said, then, that the plaintiff's asserted right to maintain this action is dependent upon the laws of New Jersey. The action is personal, not real; and if it can be maintained in New Jersey, being transitory and not local, it may be prosecuted here, because by personal process the defendant was brought within the jurisdiction of the court. But it is otherwise if on the question presented the common law prevails in the foreign State. Dennick v. R. R.,
The law of another State with respect to a particular question may be proved, not only by witnesses learned in the laws of that State, but by statutes printed by authority thereof and by the decisions and opinions of the court of last resort. The decisions of the highest court of another State, when offered in evidence, must, of course, be interpreted by the trial court and not by the jury. So, likewise, as to statutes. C. S., 1749;Harrison v. R. R., supra. The unwritten or common law of another State may be proved as a fact by oral evidence, but in the absence of proof to the contrary it is to be presumed that the common law is there in force. C. S., 1749; Lassiter v. R. R.,
To rebut the presumption that the common law prevails in New Jersey the plaintiff, subject to the defendant's exception, introduced certain statutes of that State relating to the rights of married women. The defendant's exception is addressed to the failure of the plaintiff to set forth in his complaint or to plead any of the statutes on which she relies.
The law of another State is as much a "question of law" as is the law of our own State. Our courts are presumed to have judicial knowledge of our public laws but not the laws of other states. We do not take judicial notice of the statutes of another State. Foreign laws and statutes must be pleaded and proved as a fact. Hooper v. Moore,
Waiving any objection to the sufficiency of this allegation we are of opinion that the statutes offered in evidence do not confer authority upon the plaintiff to maintain the present action. Sections 12a and 12b, pages 3236, 3237, Compiled Statutes of New Jersey, authorize a married woman to bring suit for torts committed against her person or her separate property, without joining her husband therein. These statutes obviously refer to suits, not against her husband, but against other persons, because it is further provided that his failure to join in the wife's action shall not prevent his right to maintain a separate action therefor. Peskowitz v.Kramer,
In Laszewski v. Laszewski,
We find no authority for saying that the law has been changed by implication, for in Sargeant v. Fedor, 130 At., 207, the Supreme Court of New Jersey remarked that as against the husband the common-law rule of liability is adhered to in that State.
Under the common law neither spouse could maintain an action in tort against the other. Phillips v. Barnet, 1 Q. B. D., 436; Crowell v. Crowell,
No law has any effect, of its own force, beyond the limits of the sovereignty from which its authority is derived. The extent to which the law of one nation shall be allowed to operate within the dominion of another nation depends upon the rule of comity; and comity is the recognition which one nation allows within its territory to the legislative, executive, or judicial acts of another nation. Hilton v.Guyot,
Questions relating to public policy often involve a distinction between legislation and the approval, or adoption, and enforcement of a public law. The latter may and the former may not constitute a rule of policy. The distinction is pointed out in Thompson v. Taylor, 54 L.R.A. (N.J.), 585, in the words following: "The distinction between regulative legislation and the adoption of a principle of public law is too important to lose sight of. To declare, as the common law did, that the welfare of society required that wives be incapable of making contracts, is an illustration of the adoption of a principle which so long as it was adhered to, constituted a rule of public policy. When, however, civilized states became satisfied that the welfare of society was not best served by the maintenance of this principle it was abandoned by the recognition of its opposite, viz., that married women possessed capacity to contract. The questions that then arose, viz., what *580 contract may they make, and what may they not? while calling for the exercise of legislative discretion based upon considerations that affected a large class of individuals, did not, either in theory or in fact, involve any principle upon which the general welfare of the body of citizens of the State was assumed to rest. With the abandonment of the political principle the matter was broken up into discretionary exercises of legislative regulation in the course of which different bodies or the same legislative body at different periods, might lay down varying rules without destroying that comity that is so essential to commercial confidence and intercourse."
This, it seems to us, is a refutation of the contention that we should not recognize the law of New Jersey because it conflicts with principles enunciated in the cited cases of Crowell and Roberts. Application of the principle that foreign laws will not be given effect when contrary to the settled public policy of the forum is often made in a certain class of cases — such, for example, as prohibited marriages, wagers, lotteries, racing, contracts for gaming or the sale of liquor, and others.S. v. Ross,
The second objection is without merit. We do not see how the recognition of the New Jersey law can involve any injustice or injury to the people of North Carolina. Judgment
Affirmed.