## Facts

- Rhoda Dym and Morris Gordon were domiciled in New York and spent the summer in Colorado as University of Colorado students.
- They traveled to Colorado separately and had no prior New York-based arrangement for shared transportation.
- While in Colorado, Gordon offered Dym a free ride as a nonpaying guest passenger in his car.
- The vehicle was registered and insured in New York.
- Gordon’s ordinary negligence caused an automobile accident in Colorado that injured Dym.
- Colorado law limited a guest passenger’s recovery to injuries caused intentionally, by intoxication, or by conduct amounting to willful and wanton disregard; it was conceded Gordon’s conduct did not meet that standard.
- The case was litigated in New York on agreed facts: the trial court applied New York law and awarded Dym judgment; the Appellate Division reversed and applied Colorado law; the New York Court of Appeals affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether New York or Colorado law governs a New York guest passenger’s claim against a New York host driver for injuries from an accident in Colorado when the host–guest relationship was formed while both were temporarily residing in Colorado.
2. Under interest analysis, whether Colorado’s guest statute should bar recovery for ordinary negligence despite the parties’ common New York domicile and New York insurance/registration.

## Decision

- The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the Appellate Division and applied Colorado law.
- Because Colorado’s guest statute barred a guest’s recovery for ordinary negligence and the “willful and wanton” threshold was not met, Dym’s claim was dismissed.
- The majority distinguished the earlier abandonment of strict lex loci delicti by emphasizing that interest analysis can require application of non-forum law when the other state’s contacts and policies are stronger.
- A dissent would have applied New York law based on New York’s compensatory interest in protecting its domiciliaries from foreign guest statutes.

## Legal Principles

- In tort conflicts, the governing law turns on an interest-analysis assessment of the jurisdictions’ contacts and governmental interests in the specific issue, rather than a mechanical rule applying the law of the place of the wrong.
- The locus of the accident may carry greater weight when it is not merely incidental to the parties’ relationship; where the parties’ relationship and conduct are centered in the foreign state, that state’s regulatory policy may control.
- A state’s guest statute reflects a policy choice about host–guest liability and the level of culpability required for a nonpaying passenger to recover for injuries occurring within that state.
- Shared forum domicile and forum-based insurance/registration are relevant contacts but may be outweighed when the relationship giving rise to the duty and the accident both arose in the other state.

## Conclusion

New York’s highest court held that Colorado had the stronger interest in regulating a host–guest relationship created and carried out while the parties were living in Colorado and in applying its guest statute to a Colorado accident, so Colorado law governed and barred recovery for ordinary negligence.


Dym v. Gordon, 16 N.Y.2d 120, 262 N.Y.S.2d 463, 209 N.E.2d 792 (N.Y. 1965)