JULIA V. McGRATH v. ETHAN L. DOCKENDORF
Record No. 160262
Supreme Court of Virginia
December 15, 2016
JUSTICE STEPHEN R. McCULLOUGH
PRESENT: All the Justices
Daniel E. Ortiz, Judge
We resolve in this appeal whether the “heart balm” statute,
BACKGROUND
On August 25, 2012, Ethan L. Dockendorf proposed to Julia V. McGrath. She accepted. He offered her a two-carat engagement ring worth approximately $26,000. In September 2013, after the relationship deteriorated, he broke off the engagement. The parties never married. Love yielded to litigation, and Dockendorf filed an action in detinue seeking, among other things, the return of the ring. In response, McGrath demurred to Dockendorf‘s complaint, arguing that it was barred by
ANALYSIS
The issue before us is one of statutory construction, which we review de novo. Jones v. Williams, 280 Va. 635, 638, 701 S.E.2d 405, 406 (2010).
“By the late nineteenth century, breach of promise to marry suits were more popular in America than they were in England.” Id. at 746. Such “trials had become ‘social phenomen[a]‘--entertainment for the entire town and fodder for sensationalistic tabloid media.” Id. Over time, such actions were severely “criticized as being anachronistic, contrary to modern notions of justice, and subject to abuse by blackmail.” Note: Heartbalm Statutes and Deceit Actions, 83 Mich. L. Rev. 1770, 1770 (1985). Breach of promise to marry actions were criticized for excessive verdicts, fueled by “[l]ax evidentiary standards [that] allowed for private and sensational details to be admitted and often skewed the outcome of the case in favor of the plaintiff.” Grant & Grant, 35 Cap. U. L. Rev. at 746.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, no civil action shall lie or be maintained in this Commonwealth for alienation of affection, breach of promise to marry, or criminal conversation upon which a cause of action arose or occurred on or after June 28, 1968.
In addition to an action for breach of promise to marry, Virginia law also recognized a separate right to seek the return of an engagement ring when the engagement is broken off. This right of action is rooted in the common law of conditional gifts. We held in Pretlow v. Pretlow, 177 Va. 524, 555, 14 S.E.2d 381, 388 (1941), that when a prospective husband makes a present to his intended wife “and the inducement for the gift is the fact of her promise to marry him, if she break off the marriage, he may recover from her the value of such present.”
McGrath argues that the text of the statute forecloses Dockendorf‘s action. She notes that an action to recover an engagement ring is, in effect, an action for breach of promise to marry because without a breached promise to marry there would be no action to recover the ring. Dockendorf responds that the text and purpose of the statute evince a legislative intent to abolish a specific type of common law action not at issue in this case. We agree with Dockendorf.
Detinue differs from an action for breach of a promise to marry in significant ways. Breach of promise to marry suits were intended to broadly compensate a plaintiff for the loss and humiliation of a broken engagement. Grubb, 73 Va. at 209. In contrast, “[t]he object of a detinue action is to recover specific personal property and damages for its detention.” Broad Street Auto Sales, Inc. v. Baxter, 230 Va. 1, 2, 334 S.E.2d 293, 294 (1985). “The action is employed to recover a chattel from one in possession who unlawfully detains it from either the true owner or one lawfully entitled to its possession.” Id. To succeed in a detinue action, a plaintiff must establish the following:
(1) The plaintiff must have property in the thing sought to be recovered; (2) he must have the right to its immediate possession;
(3) it must be capable of identification; (4) the property must be of some value, and (5) the defendant must have had possession at some time prior to the institution of the action.
Vicars v. Atlantic Discount Co., 205 Va. 934, 938, 140 S.E.2d 667, 670 (1965). Damages are limited. “If the specific property cannot be returned, judgment is rendered for its value.” Broad Street Auto Sales, Inc., 230 Va. at 2, 334 S.E.2d at 294. Simply put, due to its limited scope and the limited relief afforded by it, a detinue action rooted in a theory of conditional gift is not and does not resemble an action for breach of a promise to marry.
We note that a majority of other courts have, consistent with our interpretation of Virginia‘s statute, rejected the argument that their state‘s heart balm statute foreclosed an action for recovery of a ring or other property. See In re Marriage of Heinzman, 596 P.2d 61, 63 (Colo. 1979); Piccininni v. Hajus, 429 A.2d 886, 888 (Conn. 1980); Gill v. Shively, 320 So. 2d 415, 416-17 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1975); De Cicco v. Barker, 159 N.E.2d 534, 535 (Mass. 1959); Gikas v. Nicholis, 71 A.2d 785, 786 (N.H. 1950); Beberman v. Segal, 69 A.2d 587, 587 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div. 1949); Pavlicic, 136 A.2d at 131; Bryan v. Lincoln, 285 S.E.2d 152, 153-55 (W. Va. 1981). Albinger v. Harris, 48 P.3d 711 (Mont. 2002), upon which McGrath relies, does not support her position. The court in that case concluded that Montana‘s heart balm statute did not foreclose an action for recovery of property exchanged in contemplation of marriage and that such claims “are still determined by existing law and common-law principles.” Id. at 716.3 That is the view we take.
McGrath cites Lee v. Spoden, 290 Va. 235, 248-49, 776 S.E.2d 798, 805 (2015) for the distinction we drew there between a “right of action” and a “cause of action” for purposes of res judicata. She argues that any cause of action that includes in its “nucleus of operative facts” the breach of a promise to marry is barred by
McGrath also seeks to analogize the present cause of action to McDermott v. Reynolds, 260 Va. 98, 530 S.E.2d 902 (2000). In McDermott, the plaintiff relied on a theory of intentional infliction of emotional distress to recover damages stemming from an adulterous relationship the defendant maintained with the plaintiff‘s wife. We held that
Finally, McGrath argues that “if the condition to a gift (or a contract) is illegal, the condition fails as a matter of law.” She maintains that because the General Assembly has prohibited a cause of action for breach of a promise to marry, the basis for the condition of the gift is void as against public policy. We find this argument unpersuasive. For one thing, it appears to rest on the same mistaken premise about the scope of the heart balm statute. For another, there is a difference between a promise to marry, which, even though it is unenforceable, is hardly illegal or against public policy, and an action for recovery of damages for breach of a promise to marry, which is barred by
CONCLUSION
The heart balm statute,
Affirmed.