## Facts

- Robert Conklin and Russell Thurlby, Illinois residents, rode as nonpaying guest passengers in a car owned and driven by J.C. Horner, also an Illinois resident.
- The vehicle was insured under an Illinois liability policy.
- The trip began in Illinois and was intended to end in Illinois.
- While traveling in Wisconsin, the car struck a tree on a Wisconsin highway, injuring the passengers.
- The passengers sued Horner in Wisconsin state court alleging negligence.
- Horner pleaded Illinois’s guest statute as an affirmative defense, which would bar recovery absent “wilful and wanton” misconduct.
- The circuit court sustained demurrers to the guest-statute defenses, allowing the actions to proceed under Wisconsin’s ordinary-negligence standard.

## Issues

1. In a Wisconsin automobile accident involving only Illinois domiciliaries on an Illinois-to-Illinois trip, should Wisconsin apply its own ordinary-negligence law or Illinois’s guest statute requiring “wilful and wanton” misconduct?
2. Under Wisconsin’s choice-of-law methodology, do Wisconsin’s contacts and policy interests justify rejecting the Illinois guest statute defense?

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Wisconsin affirmed the orders sustaining the demurrers to Horner’s Illinois guest-statute defenses.
- Wisconsin law governed the tort standard, permitting recovery upon proof of ordinary negligence.
- Applying Illinois’s guest statute was rejected after a qualitative evaluation of contacts and policy factors under Wisconsin’s modern choice-of-law approach.

## Legal Principles

- Wisconsin uses a qualitative, contact-and-policy-based choice-of-law method rather than automatically applying the law of the place of the wrong.
- In tort conflicts, courts consider choice-influencing factors including predictability, interstate order, ease of administration, the forum’s governmental interests, and the “better rule of law.”
- A forum may apply its own negligence standard to accidents on its highways when it has strong interests in regulating conduct and providing compensation for injuries within its borders, even if the parties share a common out-of-state domicile.
- A sister state’s guest statute protecting host drivers may be declined where it conflicts with the forum’s safety and compensation policies and is judged inferior to the forum’s ordinary-negligence rule.

## Conclusion

The Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Wisconsin’s ordinary-negligence law applied to an accident occurring in Wisconsin, despite the parties’ common Illinois domicile and Illinois insurance, and it affirmed dismissal of the Illinois guest-statute defenses.


Conklin v. Horner, 157 N.W.2d 579 (Wis. 1968)