## Facts

- Helen Louise Stringer, a lifelong resident of Greenup County, Kentucky, rode as a nonpaying guest passenger in a car owned and driven by John I. Leggett.
- On September 9, 1967, during a trip that began in Kentucky and traveled into Ohio, the car crashed on U.S. Route 23 in Ohio, killing Stringer.
- Leggett was legally domiciled in Ohio (voted, paid taxes, licensed his car, and conducted banking there) but worked in Russell, Kentucky, where Stringer also worked for years in the same office.
- For convenience related to his Kentucky employment and activities, Leggett often stayed at the Russell YMCA and kept a rented room there for about a year, averaging about two nights per week.
- The administratrix of Stringer’s estate filed a wrongful-death action in Kentucky seeking damages and burial expenses, alleging ordinary and gross negligence.
- Leggett asserted Ohio’s guest statute, which bars recovery by nonpaying guests absent willful or wanton misconduct.

## Issues

1. In a Kentucky wrongful-death action arising from an Ohio automobile accident, should the court apply Ohio law (including Ohio’s guest statute) under lex loci delicti, or Kentucky law under a significant-contacts/interest analysis?
2. If Kentucky law applies, does the Ohio guest statute’s willful-or-wanton threshold limit the plaintiff’s negligence claims?

## Decision

- The Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed the summary judgment entered for Leggett.
- The court held Kentucky law governed because Kentucky had the more significant relationship to the parties and the occurrence.
- Because Ohio law should not have been applied, the trial court’s guest-statute-based dismissal could not stand.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings under Kentucky law.

## Legal Principles

- Kentucky applies a flexible conflict-of-laws approach in multistate tort cases, focusing on significant contacts and state interests rather than mechanically applying the law of the place of injury.
- The place of injury is a relevant contact but is not dispositive when other contacts (domicile, place where the relationship is centered, employment ties, and trip origins/expected return) point more strongly to another state.
- When Kentucky’s contacts with the parties and the controversy are numerous and significant, Kentucky may apply its own tort law even though the accident occurred in another state.
- If Kentucky law governs, an out-of-state guest statute that would restrict recovery absent willful or wanton misconduct does not control liability in the Kentucky action.

## Conclusion

The court applied a significant-contacts and state-interests analysis and concluded Kentucky, not Ohio, supplied the governing law for a wrongful-death claim arising from an Ohio crash, thereby rejecting application of Ohio’s guest statute and reinstating the plaintiff’s negligence claims for litigation on remand.


Foster v. Leggett, 484 S.W.2d 827 (Ky. Ct. App. 1972)