## Facts

- Catharina M. Tooker, Marcia Lopez, and Susan Silk, all students at Michigan State University, traveled by car from the university toward Detroit for the weekend.
- In Michigan, the car overturned after Lopez (the driver) lost control while attempting to pass another car; Tooker and Lopez died, and Silk was seriously injured.
- Tooker and Lopez were New York domiciliaries, lived in the same dormitory, and were classmates.
- The car was owned by Lopez’s father, a New York resident; it was registered and insured in New York.
- Tooker’s estate brought a New York wrongful-death action against Lopez’s estate.
- The defendant asserted Michigan’s guest statute as an affirmative defense, which limited a guest passenger’s recovery to cases of willful misconduct or gross negligence.
- Special Term struck the guest-statute defense, concluding New York law should apply; the Appellate Division reinstated the defense, believing itself bound to apply Michigan law; the Court of Appeals granted leave to appeal.

## Issues

1. In a New York wrongful-death action arising from a Michigan accident involving New York domiciliaries and a New York-registered and insured vehicle, whether Michigan’s guest statute or New York tort law governs intra-vehicle liability.
2. Whether, under New York’s post-*Babcock* choice-of-law approach, the place of injury controls when the accident location is fortuitous and the foreign state’s policy interests are not implicated.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division and reinstated Special Term’s order striking the Michigan guest-statute defense.
- The court applied New York law, holding Michigan’s guest statute should not limit recovery in this action.
- The majority reasoned that Michigan’s policy behind the guest statute (including protection of local drivers/insurers and deterrence of collusive claims against local insurers) was not meaningfully implicated because the parties, vehicle registration, and insurance were centered in New York.
- The court treated the Michigan location of the accident as accidental in relation to the liability-limiting policy at issue, and therefore insufficient to justify applying Michigan’s restrictive rule.
- A dissent would have applied Michigan law, giving greater weight to the place of the tort and disputing the majority’s treatment of the accident location as fortuitous.

## Legal Principles

- New York applies an interest-analysis approach in tort choice-of-law disputes, asking which jurisdiction has a legitimate governmental interest in applying its rule to the specific issue and party configuration.
- A foreign guest statute limiting a passenger’s recovery generally should not be applied in New York when the foreign jurisdiction lacks a substantial interest in restricting recovery in the particular case.
- When driver and passenger share a common domicile and the vehicle is registered and insured there, that state commonly has the stronger regulatory and compensatory interest in determining intra-vehicle liability, even if the accident occurs elsewhere.
- The place of injury may be discounted when it is fortuitous as to the policy served by the competing liability rules.

## Conclusion

The Court of Appeals held that New York law governed a wrongful-death claim between New York domiciliaries arising from a Michigan accident in a New York-registered and insured vehicle, and it refused to apply Michigan’s guest statute because Michigan lacked a substantial interest in limiting liability on these facts while New York had a strong compensatory interest in full recovery.


Tooker v. Lopez, 24 N.Y.2d 569 (N.Y. 1969)