## Facts

- Gina Tucci, a California resident, accepted by telephone a four-month job as an aerobics instructor at a Club Med resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
- While working at the resort, Tucci suffered an eye injury.
- On April 18, 1996, while returning from an eye doctor in Santo Domingo in a Club Med-owned truck driven by a Club Med employee, she suffered pelvic injuries.
- Club Med maintained workers’ compensation coverage required by Dominican law through AXA Courtage, a French insurer not authorized to write workers’ compensation insurance in California.
- The insurer paid Tucci more than $110,000 in medical benefits; Tucci rejected further benefits offered under the Dominican system.
- Club Med did not secure workers’ compensation insurance with an insurer licensed in California.
- Tucci filed a California state-court negligence action against Club Med seeking tort damages (separate from a WCAB benefits filing).

## Issues

1. Under California choice-of-law rules, whether California Labor Code § 3706 (permitting tort actions against illegally uninsured employers) applies to a California resident injured while employed in the Dominican Republic, or whether Dominican workers’ compensation law provides the exclusive remedy and bars the tort action.
2. Whether California public policy favoring tort remedies against illegally uninsured employers requires applying California law notwithstanding Dominican exclusivity.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for Club Med and the denial of Tucci’s cross-motion.
- The court held Dominican Republic law governed the dispute and provided an exclusive workers’ compensation remedy that barred Tucci’s California tort suit.
- Applying California’s governmental-interest and comparative-impairment analysis, the court concluded the Dominican Republic’s regulatory interest in workplace injuries occurring within its territory would be more impaired if its exclusivity rule were displaced.
- The court rejected a public-policy override, emphasizing the employment and injuries occurred abroad and Club Med complied with Dominican compensation requirements.

## Legal Principles

- California applies a governmental-interest choice-of-law analysis: (1) identify material differences between laws, (2) determine each jurisdiction’s interest in application, and (3) in a true conflict, apply the law of the jurisdiction whose interests would be more impaired if subordinated.
- Where a foreign jurisdiction’s workers’ compensation law provides an exclusive remedy for injuries occurring within its territory during local employment, California may apply that law to bar a California tort action, even if the employee is a California domiciliary.
- California’s uninsured-employer tort remedy under Labor Code § 3706 is not automatically applied to foreign employment; its deterrent and protective purposes are strongest when the employment relationship and coverage obligations are centered in California.
- California public policy does not require displacing foreign workers’ compensation exclusivity when the employer complied with the foreign system governing the workplace and injury.

## Conclusion

The court applied Dominican Republic workers’ compensation law under California’s choice-of-law framework, holding that Dominican exclusivity controlled injuries arising from employment and an accident in the Dominican Republic and therefore barred a California negligence action against the employer.


Tucci v. Club Mediterranee, S.A., 89 Cal. App. 4th 180, 107 Cal. Rptr. 2d 401 (Ct. App. 2001)