Fourth Department Addresses Conflict of Law Issue

Conflict of law issues can sometimes be confusing, so it's always helpful to review the applicable law.  In a recent  Fourth Department decision, the Court considered the issue of whether New York law or the laws of Ontario applied in Marillo v Benjamin Moore & Co., 2006 NY Slip Op 07007.  In this case, the plaintiff, who lived in New York, was injured while unloading a truck at a manufacturing facility owned by one of the defendants in Ontario, Canada.  Both corporate defendants, one of whom was the parent company of the other, were domiciled in New Jersey.

The conflicting laws related to the cap on the amount of noneconomic damages recoverable by the plaintiff, and thus the parties agreed that the the conflicting laws were loss-allocating rather than substantive.

Thus, as the Fourth Department stated:

(O)ne of the three Neumeier rules applies (Neumeier v Kuehner, 31 NY2d 121, 128; see Cooney v Osgood Mach., 81 NY2d 66, 72; Dorsey v Yantambwe, 276 AD2d 108, 110, lv denied 96 NY2d 712). The determination of which rule applies depends, in the first instance, on the domiciles of the parties (see Cooney, 81 NY2d at 73-74).

The Court determined that pursuant to the third rule set forth in  Neumeier, New York law applied in this case:

Ontario has no interest in the application of its limitation on the recovery of noneconomic damages in an action between nondomiciliaries (see King v Car Rentals, Inc., 29 AD3d 205, 214), but New York has "an important interest in protecting its own residents injured in a foreign [jurisdiction]" by ensuring that they may receive full compensation for their injuries...