Mason v. Southern New England Conference Ass'n of Seventh-Day Adventists

696 F.2d 135
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedDecember 27, 1982
DocketNo. 82-1169
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 696 F.2d 135 (Mason v. Southern New England Conference Ass'n of Seventh-Day Adventists) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the First Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mason v. Southern New England Conference Ass'n of Seventh-Day Adventists, 696 F.2d 135 (1st Cir. 1982).

Opinion

SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge.

This diversity case, in which the plaintiff-appellant seeks damages for injuries she sustained on the defendant’s negligently maintained premises, presents two issues on appeal. The first is a choice of law question, and the second concerns the scope of Massachusetts’ charitable immunity statute. Because we hold that Massachusetts law should govern and that the defendant is protected by the immunity statute, we affirm.

I

The defendant, the Southém New England Conference Association of Seventh-[136]*136Day Adventists (“Association”), is stipulated by the parties to be a charitable, nonprofit organization incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts. It operates a private religious school, South Lancaster Academy, in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. The Academy building contains, in addition to classrooms and the like, a multipurpose room with a motion picture screen generally used for showing educational films.

On December 20, 1975, the plaintiff, Marigold Mason, a resident of Maine, attended an extended family reunion and Christmas party at the Academy. The Association had made the building available to the family free of charge, on the request of a Massachusetts family member who had once served on the Academy school board and whose children attended the school. Many of the family members, including the plaintiff, were Seventh-Day Adventists and former students at the school. During the party the motion picture screen fell, injuring Mason.

Mason and her husband brought suit in the United States District Court for the District of Maine. On June 5, 1981, judgment was entered on jury verdicts awarding $149,881.80 to Mrs. Mason for her injuries and $6000 to Mr. Mason for loss of consortium. On the Association’s motion to amend the judgment in light of the Massachusetts limited charitable immunity statute, Mass.Gen.Laws Ann. ch. 231, § 85K (West Supp.1982),1 the court reduced the amount of the personal injury award to $20,000 plus interest and costs, the parties having settled Mr. Mason’s claim.

Mason appeals from the amended judgment, arguing first that the district court should have applied the law of Maine, under which she might have recovered full damages,2 and second that Massachusetts law, if applicable, does not limit recovery because the Association’s activities in question were not “directly charitable.” We address these contentions in turn.

II

In diversity cases a federal court must apply the choice of law rules of the state in which it sits. Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Manufacturing Co., 313 U.S. 487, 496, 61 S.Ct. 1020, 1021, 85 L.Ed. 1477 (1941). The district court below was therefore bound to look to Maine conflicts principles.

In Beaulieu v. Beaulieu, 265 A.2d 610 (Me.1970), the Maine Supreme Court abandoned its former rule of applying the lex loci delicti in tort cases, and chose to apply Maine law rather than that of Massachusetts, where the injury occurred. Beau-lieu does not mean that the law of the [137]*137forum state is always to be preferred, however. In that case the court declined to apply Massachusetts’ automobile guest statute because Maine contacts (the residence of the driver and passenger, the origin and destination of the journey, the state of registration and insurance of the automobile) dominated. The court clarified its approach in Adams v. Buffalo Forge Co., 443 A.2d 932, 934 (Me.1982), specifically endorsing the “most significant relationship” test of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws §§ 145-146 (1971). In determining what law a Maine court would apply, therefore, we must turn to the Restatement.

Section 6 of the Second Restatement 3 lists various general policy considerations relevant to choice of law. In tort cases, the Restatement counsels the court to apply the law of the state with the most significant relationship to the parties and event, weighing enumerated contacts in applying the_, standards of section 6. Id. § 145.4 The Restatement further specifies that in personal injury cases the court should choose the law of the state of injury unless another state’s relationship to the injury is more significant, judged by the section 6 criteria. Id. § 146.5 Our task is therefore to determine whether the presumptive applicability of the law of the state of injury (Massachusetts) was overcome by policy considerations or by an imbalance of contacts.

The contacts in this case weigh heavily toward Massachusetts. The only contact with Maine is the residence of the plaintiff; all the others deemed significant by section 145(2) (place of injury, place of the conduct that caused the injury, residence of the defendant, and place where the relationship between the parties is centered) are with Massachusetts.

The considerations of section 6, evaluated in light of the dominant contacts, do not compel the application of Maine law. Some of the factors (needs of the interstate system; protection of expectations; certainty, predictability and uniformity of result) are geared more toward consensual relationships than tort situations. See In re Air Crash Disaster, 399 F.Supp. 1106, 1111 n. 8 (D.Mass.1975); Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 6 comments d, g, i (1971). To the extent that predictability [138]*138should be considered, it counsels giving the interest of the forum state no greater weight (simply because of its status as the forum) than that of any other interested state, lest forum-shopping and nonuniformity result.

The policies of the forum state and the other interested state, two more considerations listed in section 6, are a wash in this case to the extent that they conflict. If we construe the relevant statutes as the plaintiff urges,6 Massachusetts’ law protects its resident by imposing a $20,000 ceiling in suits against charitable institutions; Maine’s law protects its resident by permitting judgments against charitable institutions to the extent of their insurance. These policies therefore at best furnish no principle for choosing which law to apply; if the dominance of Massachusetts contacts makes that state’s interests more weighty, the balance may tip against the plaintiff’s wishes.

Nor do the general policies underlying the field of charitable immunity furnish a principle of decision. Both Maine’s and Massachusetts’ statutes limit that immunity, and we hesitate to pronounce one method better than the other. In some cases Massachusetts’ law will allow more generous recovery than Maine’s, either because no judgment ceiling is imposed when the activity involved is “primarily commercial,” or because the institution’s insurance coverage falls short of $20,000. Maine’s system of allowing charities to choose the extent of their liability in their insurance contracts is not clearly superior to Massachusetts’ system in promoting the goals of compensating the injured while protecting charitable institutions.

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Bluebook (online)
696 F.2d 135, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mason-v-southern-new-england-conference-assn-of-seventh-day-adventists-ca1-1982.