O'Connor v. O'Connor

The sole issue on this appeal is whether, under the circumstances of this case, an injured person may pursue a cause of action under Connecticut law to recover for allegedly tortious conduct that occurred in a jurisdiction where such a cause of action would not be permitted. The plaintiff, Roseann O’Connor, brought an action against the defendant, Brian O’Connor, seeking damages for injuries that she suffered as a result of an automobile accident in Quebec.1 The trial court, Reilly, J., granted the defendant’s motion to strike the complaint, finding that the law of *634Quebec, the place of injury, governed the controversy and that Quebec law precluded the plaintiffs action. Thereafter, the court, S. Freedman, J., rendered a judgment in favor of the defendant. The plaintiff appealed to the Appellate Court, which, in a per curiam opinion, upheld the trial court’s judgment. We reverse the judgment of the Appellate Court.

The relevant facts are undisputed. The plaintiff was injured as a result of a one car automobile accident that occurred on September 3,1981, in the province of Quebec, Canada. At the time of the accident, the defendant was operating the automobile and the plaintiff was his sole passenger. The parties, both of whom were Connecticut domiciliaries, were on a one day pleasure trip that began, and was intended to end, in Vermont. The plaintiff underwent hospital treatment for her injuries in Quebec and has suffered continuing physical disabilities while residing in Connecticut.

The plaintiff brought an action against the defendant on August 17,1983, alleging that she had suffered serious and permanent injuries as a result of the defendant’s negligent operation of the automobile. The plaintiff’s complaint stated a cause of action permitted by General Statutes § 38-323,2 part of Connecticut’s No-*635fault Motor Vehicle Insurance Act, General Statutes §§ 38-319 through 38-350. Section 38-323 permits the victim of serious physical or economic injury caused by an automobile accident to sue the tortfeasor for damages. The defendant, however, moved to strike the complaint, on the ground that the applicable law in the case was the law of Quebec. Quebec law would not permit the plaintiff’s tort action because Quebec Revised Statutes, chapter A-25, title II, §§ 3 and 4, provides instead for government funded compensation for victims of bodily injury caused by automobile accidents. 3

After a hearing, the trial court, Reilly, J., granted the motion to strike in an oral decision. The court expressly based its decision on this court’s opinion in Gibson v. Fullin, 172 Conn. 407, 374 A.2d 1061 (1977), our most recent decision affirming the doctrine that *636the nature and extent of tort liability is governed by the place of injury, hereinafter referred to as “lex loci delicti” or “lex loci.” When judgment was subsequently rendered in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff appealed to the Appellate Court, which, like the trial court, considered itself bound by this court’s past adherence to the lex loci doctrine. Accordingly, the Appellate Court, in a per curiam opinion, affirmed the judgment of the trial court. O’Connor v. O’Connor, 4 Conn. App. 19, 20, 492 A.2d 207, cert. granted, 196 Conn. 812, 495 A.2d 280 (1985).

On appeal to this court, the plaintiff argues that the trial court erred in granting the defendant’s motion to strike. Recognizing that the trial court and the Appellate Court accurately applied the rules governing conflict of laws that our Connecticut cases have previously articulated, the plaintiff urges this court to reexamine the propriety of our continued adherence to the doctrine of lex loci delicti in cases of personal injury. In the particular circumstances of this case, the plaintiff maintains, we should no longer adhere rigidly to the doctrine of lex loci but should instead seek to discern and to apply the law of the jurisdiction that has the most significant relationship to the controversy, in accordance with the principles of the Restatement Second of Conflict of Laws. Under the Restatement, according to the plaintiff, the jurisdiction that has the most significant relationship to this tort action is not Quebec but Connecticut. Quebec, although it was the place of injury, has no significant interest in applying its statutory compensation scheme to the controversy because the location of the automobile accident in Quebec was purely fortuitous. Connecticut, by contrast, has a substantial interest in applying its law to the case because: (1) both parties are domiciled and employed in Connecticut; (2) both parties are subject to the requirements and entitled to the benefits of Connecticut’s no-fault *637insurance law, and that law embodies a policy of providing access to the courts for persons with serious bodily injuries; and (3) aside from her initial treatment after the accident, the plaintiff has received all of her post-accident medical care in Connecticut. We agree with the plaintiff.

I

This court has traditionally adhered to the doctrine that the substantive rights and obligations arising out of a tort controversy are determined by the law of the place of injury, or lex loci delicti. Gibson v. Fullin, supra, 411; Menczer v. Menczer, 160 Conn. 563, 564-65, 280 A.2d 875 (1971); Landers v. Landers, 153 Conn. 303, 304, 216 A.2d 183 (1966); Orr v. Ahern, 107 Conn. 174, 176, 139 A. 691 (1928). Recently, however, we have recognized that there are circumstances in which strict application of the lex loci delicti rule frustrates the legitimate expectations of the parties and undermines an important policy of this state. In such circumstances, we have refused to apply the doctrine. Simaitis v. Flood, 182 Conn. 24, 437 A.2d 828 (1980).

Simaitis was a plaintiffs appeal of an adverse summary judgment in a negligence action arising out of an automobile accident that occurred in Tennessee. The parties were Connecticut domiciliaries employed by a Connecticut corporation. The accident occurred while they were traveling in the course of their employment. The dispositive issue on appeal was whether the governing law was the workers’ compensation act of Tennessee, which barred the plaintiff’s action for damages, or the Connecticut act, which permitted such an action. We held that application of the lex loci rule in these circumstances afforded an “unsatisfactory resolution” to the choice of law problem; id., 29; noting that to employ the rule “would bestow upon temporary visitors injured in Connecticut all the relief which the Con*638necticut compensation act affords, but deny that same relief to Connecticut residents injured while on temporary business outside the state, even when all other incidents of employment . . . are in Connecticut.” Id., 29-30. Although we expressly declined to reconsider the rule of lex loci for tort law in general, we decided that it was appropriate to pursue an alternate approach for choice of law issues in workers’ compensation cases. The alternate approach that we adopted looked to an examination of the respective interests of the relevant jurisdictions in applying their law to the controversy, and turned for guidance to the principles of § 181 of the Restatement Second of Conflict of Laws. Simaitis v. Flood, supra, 32-33. Applying the principles of the Restatement, we held that the law of Connecticut, and not that of Tennessee, should govern the plaintiff’s right to recover. Id., 34.

Our decision in Simaitis has rightly been interpreted as a signal that we are not wholeheartedly committed to application of lex loci as the sole approach to choice of law in all torts cases. See R. Silver & S. Twardy, “The Connecticut Torts Conflict of Laws Rule: A Proposal for Change,” 57 Conn. B.J. 236, 237-38 (1983). Similarly, two federal district court cases have interpreted dicta in Gibson v. Fullin, supra, as contemplating circumstances in which Connecticut courts might deviate from the lex loci doctrine provided a “compelling reason” exists to do so. Halstead v. United States, 535 F. Sup. 782, 788 (D. Conn. 1982), aff’d sub nom. Saloomey v. Jeppesen & Co., 707 F.2d 671 (2d Cir. 1983); DeForneaux v. Sturm, Ruger & Co., 503 F. Sup. 2, 4 (D. Conn.), aff’d, 639 F.2d 768 (2d Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 908, 101 S. Ct. 1975, 68 L. Ed. 2d 295 (1981).4

*639II

We have consistently held that “a court should not overrule its earlier decisions unless the most cogent reasons and inescapable logic requires it.” Herald Publishing Co. v. Bill, 142 Conn. 53, 62, 111 A.2d 4 (1955); see also State v. Castonguay, 194 Conn. 416, 435, 481 A.2d 56 (1984); Society for Savings v. Chestnut Estates, Inc., 176 Conn. 563, 570, 409 A.2d 1020 (1979). We have also recognized, however, that ‘‘[principles of law which serve one generation well may, by reason of changing conditions, disserve a later one,” and that “[e]xperience can and often does demonstrate that a rule, once believed sound, needs modification to serve justice better.” Herald Publishing Co. v. Bill, supra. Accordingly, we now undertake to analyze the policies and principles underlying the doctrine of lex loci delicti, as a preliminary step to determining whether “cogent reasons and inescapable logic” demand that we abandon the doctrine under the circumstances of the present case.

The doctrine of lex loci delicti, as first adopted by American courts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, presumes that the rights and obligations of the parties to a tort action “vest” at the place of injury. See 3 J. Beale, Conflict of Laws (1935) p. 1968. Justice Cardozo, describing the vested rights theory in Loucks v. Standard Oil Co., 224 N.Y. 99, 110, 120 N.E. 198 (1918), stated: “A foreign statute is not law in this state, but it gives rise to an obligation, which, if transitory, ‘follows the person and may be enforced wherever the person may be found .... [I]t is a principle of every civilized law that vested rights shall be *640protected’ (Beale, [Conflict of Laws], § 51).” In one of the earliest Connecticut decisions to recognize the lex loci doctrine, this court held: “The right of action for the injury is inseparable from its extent, hence the measure of damages as well as the right of recovery are determined by the place of the injury .... Such an obligation, or right of action, as a general rule, becomes vested, and will be enforced here precisely as if the obligation or right of action had accrued or arisen in this jurisdiction.” Commonwealth Fuel Co. v. McNeil, 103 Conn. 390, 405-406, 130 A. 794 (1925). The vested rights theory was a guiding principle of the first Restatement of Conflict of Laws. See Restatement, Conflict of Laws (1934) §§ 377 through 379.

The vested rights theory of choice of law is an anachronism in modern jurisprudence. Its underlying premise, that the legislative jurisdiction of the place where a right “vests” must be recognized in every other jurisdiction, presupposes that a nationally uniform system of choice of law rules is necessary and desirable. See R. Leflar, American Conflicts Law (1968) pp. 205-206. Choice of law rules are not immutable principles, however. Subject to the limitations of the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment 5 and the full faith and credit clause of article IV, § 1, of the United States constitution;6 see Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797, 814-23, 105 S. Ct. 2965, 86 L. Ed. 2d 628 (1985); Allstate Ins. Co. v. Hague, 449 U.S. 302, 308-13, 101 S. Ct. 633, 66 L. Ed. 2d 521, reh. denied, 450 U.S. *641971, 101 S. Ct. 1494, 67 L. Ed. 2d 623 (1981); Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Commission, 294 U.S. 532, 541-42, 547, 55 S. Ct. 518, 79 L. Ed. 1044 (1935); individual state courts are free to formulate choice of law rules as they deem appropriate. “[F]or a State’s substantive law to be selected in a constitutionally permissible manner, that State must have a significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts, creating state interests, such that choice of its law is neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair.” Allstate Ins. Co. v. Hague, supra, 312-13; see generally J. Martin, “Personal Jurisdiction and Choice of Law,” 78 Mich. L. Rev. 872, 874 (1980); R. Leflar, supra.

Stripped of the mantle of constitutional authority, the vested rights doctrine is simply another legal theory, and one which has been the subject of extensive criticism for the past half century. See W. Cook, “The Logical and Legal Bases of the Conflict of Laws,” 33 Yale L.J. 457 (1924); E. Lorenzen, “Territoriality, Public Policy and the Conflict of Laws,” 33 Yale L.J. 736 (1924); H. Yntema, “The Hornbook Method and the Conflict of Laws,” 37 Yale L.J. 468 (1928). Professor David F. Cavers criticized the vested rights doctrine as ignoring the substantive content of legal rules and focusing exclusively on territorial concerns, “the law’s content being irrelevant to the choice” of law. D. Cavers, Re-Stating the Conflict of Laws: The Chapter on Contracts, in XXth Century Comparative and Conflicts Law (1961) pp. 349, 350. Another, more fundamental criticism of the vested rights theory of conflicts of law is that it fails to explain “why the law of the place of wrong should be applied to cases which have arisen there. [It gives] us a guiding principle but without any raison d’etre.” M. Hancock, Torts in the Conflict of Laws (1942) p. 36.

The theoretical barrenness of the vested rights doctrine, from which the rule of lex loci delicti derives, is *642but one of the many reasons that a majority of state courts have rejected the rule of lex loci,7 and that legal scholars have virtually unanimously urged its abandonment.8 “The basic theme running through the attacks on the place of injury rule is that wooden application of a few overly simple rules, based on the outmoded ‘vested rights theory,’ cannot solve the complex problems which arise in modern litigation and may often yield harsh, unnecessary and unjust results.” Griffith v. United Air Lines, Inc., 416 Pa. 1, 13, 203 A.2d 796 (1964). The lex loci approach fails to acknowledge that jurisdictions other than the place of injury may have a legitimate interest in applying their laws to resolve particular issues arising out of a tort controversy. See, e.g., Babcock v. Jackson, 12 N.Y.2d 473, 478, 191 N.E.2d 279, 240 N.Y.S.2d 743 (1963); Griffith v. United Air Lines, Inc., supra; see also Simaitis v. Flood, supra, 29-30.

*643Having noted the perceived weaknesses of a categorical lex loci delicti rule, we now consider the principal reasons advanced for its retention. These are: (1) the desirability of allowing the legislature to alter established choice of law doctrines; (2) stare decisis; (3) the certainty and predictability of result afforded by a categorical choice of law rule and the concomitant ease of applying such a rule; and (4) the prevention of parochial applications of forum law in controversies involving foreign jurisdictions. See generally Friday v. Smoot, 58 Del. 488, 211 A.2d 594 (1965); McDaniel v. Sinn, 194 Kan. 625, 400 P.2d 1018 (1965); White v. King, 244 Md. 348, 223 A.2d 763 (1966); see also comment, “Selection of Law Governing Measure of Damages for Wrongful Death,” 61 Colum. L. Rev. 1497, 1509-10 (1961). We will examine each of these rationales in turn as they relate to the circumstances of the present case.

Because choice of law is a matter of “broad public policy,” the defendant argues that it is the province of the legislature, and not the courts, to make doctrinal changes in established law. Some of the courts that have chosen to adhere to the lex loci doctrine have expressed similar sentiments. See Friday v. Smoot, supra, 493; White v. King, supra, 355. We disagree. The lex loci doctrine is the creation of jurists and scholars, not legislators. See generally M. Hancock, supra, pp. 30-36 (1942); 3 J. Beale, Conflict of Laws (1935) p. 1968; see also Gutierrez v. Collins, 583 S.W.2d 312, 315 (Tex. 1979). Statutes deal expressly with choice of law issues only rarely and episodically. See R. Tray-nor, “Is This Conflict Really Necessary?” 37 Tex. L. Rev. 655, 673 (1959). The defendant’s reliance, in this regard, on General Statutes § 52-572d9 is misplaced. *644That statute abolishes the rule of lex loci delicti in actions for injuries caused by motor vehicle accidents occurring in jurisdictions which recognize interspousal immunity. The fact that, in § 52-572d, the legislature overruled a line of our decisions holding that the availability of the interspousal immunity defense depends on the law of the place of injury; see, e.g., Landers v. Landers, 153 Conn. 303, 304, 216 A.2d 183 (1966); hardly advances the defendant’s argument that the legislature has implicitly approved of the lex loci doctrine. The legislature of course retains plenary authority, subject to constitutional mandates, to formulate statutory choice of law rules. Until the legislature chooses to act, however, this court has an independent responsibility to modernize rules of law that have traditionally reposed with the judiciary.

Regarding stare decisis, the second argument in favor of retaining lex loci, we have already noted that, while courts should not overrule established precedent except in compelling circumstances, the force of precedent will not hinder our rejection of a rule whose application no longer serves the ends of justice. Herald Publishing Co. v. Bill, 142 Conn. 53, 62, 111 A.2d 4 (1955). The arguments for adherence to precedent are least compelling, furthermore, “when the rule to be discarded may not be reasonably supposed to have determined the conduct of the litigants, and particularly when in its origin it was the product of institutions or conditions which have gained a new significance or development with the progress of the years.” Hopson v. St. Mary’s Hospital, 176 Conn. 485, 496 n.5, 408 A.2d 260 (1979), quoting B. Cardozo, The Nature of *645the Judicial Process (1901) p. 151. In the present case, as in most unintentional tort cases, there is no reason to suppose that the defendant planned his conduct with the intention of availing himself of the benefits of Quebec law. “Rarely do parties contemplate the consequences of tortious conduct, and rarely if at all will they give thought to the question of what law would be applied to govern their conduct if it were to result in injury.” W. Reese, “Conflict of Laws and the Restatement Second,” 28 Law & Contemp. Prob. 679, 699 (1963); accord Griffith v. United Air Lines, Inc., supra, 23-24; Wilcox v. Wilcox, 26 Wis. 2d 617, 622, 133 N.W.2d 408 (1965); R. Sedler, “The Governmental Interest Approach to Choice of Law: An Analysis and a Reformulation,” 25 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 181, 230 (1977). Our refusal to adhere to lex loci delicti in this case, therefore, does not defeat any legitimate prelitigation expectations of the parties founded in reliance on our prior decisions. See Hopson v. St. Mary’s Hospital, supra, 495-96.

The third argument in favor of retention of the doctrine of lex loci is that it imparts certainty, predictability, and ease of application to choice of law rules. We do not underestimate these characteristics. “Simplicity in law is a virtue. Judicial efficiency often depends upon it.” R. Leflar, “Choice-Influencing Considerations in Conflicts Law,” 41 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 267, 288 (1966). The virtue of simplicity must, however, be balanced against the vice of arbitrary and inflexible application of a rigid rule. “Ease of determining applicable law and uniformity of rules of decision . . . must be subordinated to the objective of proper choice of law in conflict cases, i.e., to determine the law that most appropriately applies to the issue involved . . . .” (Citations omitted.) Reich v. Purcell, 67 Cal. 2d 551, 555, 432 P.2d 727, 63 Cal. Rptr. 31 (1967). In the present case, application of the lex loci delicti doctrine *646makes determination of the governing law turn upon a purely fortuitous circumstance: the geographical location of the parties’ automobile at the time the accident occurred. Choice of law must not be rendered a matter of happenstance, in which the respective interests of the parties and the concerned jurisdictions receive only coincidental consideration. Numerous jurisdictions have declined to apply the law of the place of injury in similar circumstances. See Fabricius v. Horgen, 257 Iowa 268, 132 N.W.2d 410 (1965); Thomas v. Hanmer, 109 App. Div. 2d 80, 489 N.Y.S.2d 802 (1985); Wilcox v. Wilcox, supra. Applying the same rationale, the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut has refused to adhere to the lex loci doctrine in a case where the plaintiffs, Connecticut residents, were killed in an airplane crash in West Virginia. “In the absence of any meaningful contact between the litigation and the state of West Virginia other than, by pure fortuity, the site of the crash, it would be offensive to traditional notions of justice and normal expectations to apply West Virginia law to adjudicate plaintiffs’ wrongful death claims.” Halstead v. United States, 535 F. Sup. 782 (D. Conn. 1982), aff’d sub nom. Saloomey v. Jeppesen & Co., 707 F.2d 671 (2d Cir. 1983).

We note, furthermore, that lex loci’s arguable advantages of uniformity and predictability have been undermined by its widespread rejection by courts and scholars, and by judicial constructions that avoid its strict application. Lex loci “no longer affords even a semblance of the general application that was once thought to be its great virtue.” Reich v. Purcell, supra, 555. Even when it was the dominant American choice of law rule, courts frequently took advantage of various “escape devices” that allowed them to pay lip service to lex loci while avoiding its strict application. *647B. Currie, “Notes on Methods and Objectives in the Conflict of Laws,” 1959 Duke L.J. 171, 175-78. Such devices included characterizing the issue at stake as procedural, rather than substantive, so that the law of the forum could be applied; see Grant v. McAuliffe, 41 Cal. 2d 859, 866, 264 P.2d 944 (1953); Kilberg v. Northeast Airlines, 9 N.Y.2d 34, 41-42, 172 N.E.2d 526, 211 N.Y.S.2d 133 (1961); or characterizing a complaint framed in tort as a contract matter, thus allowing the law governing the place of contracting, rather than the place of injury, to control. See Levy v. Daniels’ U-Drive Auto Renting Co., 108 Conn. 333, 337-38, 143 A. 163 (1928); see also Simaitis v. Flood, supra, 34. Because the use of such evasive devices undermines the predictability and ease of application of the lex loci doctrine, their use has been widely disparaged by scholarly commentators. “[I]t is a poor defense of the system to say that the unacceptable results which [lex loci] will inevitably produce can be averted by disingenuousness if the courts are sufficiently alert.” B. Currie, supra, 176.

We now consider the fourth principal argument in favor of retention of lex loci, that application of the doctrine prevents forum courts from exercising parochial favoritism. Without lex loci, there is a risk that the forum will not take seriously the foreign jurisdiction’s legitimate interest in the controversy. See generally comment, “Selection of Law Governing Measure of Damages for Wrongful Death,” supra, 1509. How seriously this risk is viewed depends upon an assessment of the available alternatives. “The alternative to a hard and fast system of doctrinal formulae is not anarchy. The difference is not between a system and no system, but between two systems; between a system which purports to have, but lacks, complete logical symmetry and one which affords latitude for the interplay and clash of conflicting factors.” F. Harper, “Policy Bases of the *648Conflict of Laws: Reflections on Rereading Professor Lorenzen’s Essays,” 56 Yale L.J. 1155,1157-58 (1947). Existing case law in other jurisdictions demonstrates that conflicts principles need not depend solely upon lex loci to assure proper deference to the legitimate claims of foreign law. A principled search for the local law of the state with the most significant relationship to the occurrence and the parties will often cause foreign law to be recognized as the law that should govern the controversy. See, e.g., Neumeier v. Kuehner, 31 N.Y.2d 121, 125-30, 286 N.E.2d 454, 335 N.Y.S.2d 64 (1972); Dym v. Gordon, 16 N.Y.2d 120, 125-28, 209 N.E.2d 792, 262 N.Y.S.2d 463 (1965); Casey v. Manson Construction & Engineering Co., 247 Or. 274, 288-93, 428 P.2d 898 (1967). “There is no reason why [a judge] should be less dispassionate in a conflicts case than in any other.” R. Traynor, supra, 675.

We are, therefore, persuaded that the time has come for the law in this state to abandon categorical allegiance to the doctrine of lex loci delicti in tort actions. Lex loci has lost its theoretical underpinnings. Its formerly broad base of support has suffered erosion. We need not decide today, however, whether to discard lex loci in all of its manifestations. It is sufficient for us to consider whether, in the circumstances of the present case, reason and justice require the relaxation of its stringent insistence on determining conflicts of laws solely by reference to the place where a tort occurred.

In deciding how to assess a replacement for lex loci, we recognize that the legal literature offers us various alternative approaches to the problems of choice of law. Three such approaches have gained widespread judicial acceptance: (1) the choice of law rules promulgated in the Restatement Second of Conflict of Laws; (2) the “governmental interest” approach developed *649by Professor Brainerd Currie;10 and (3) Professor Robert A. Leflar’s theory of choice of law, in which the applicable law in multijurisdictional controversies is determined by reference to five “choice-influencing considerations.” 11 The Restatement Second approach, the product of more than a decade of research, incorporates some of the attributes of the latter two approaches, as well as others, in an attempt to “provide formulations that were true to the cases, were broad enough to permit further development in the law, and yet were able to give some guidance by pointing to what was thought would probably be the result reached in the majority of cases.” W. Reese, “The Second Restatement of Conflict of Laws Revisited,” 34 Mercer L. Rev. 501, 519 (1983). A majority of the courts that have abandoned lex loci have adopted the principles of the Restatement Second as representing the most comprehensive and equitably balanced approach to conflict of laws.12 It is *650therefore our conclusion that we too should incorporate the guidelines of the Restatement as the governing principles for those cases in which application of the doctrine of lex loci would produce an arbitrary, irrational result.

Ill

We turn now to an examination of the relevant provisions of the Restatement Second of Conflict of Laws in the context of the dispute presently before us. We note that the defendant, if he cannot persuade us to retain the doctrine of lex loci in its entirety, argues, in the alternative, that application of the principles of the Restatement would likewise require deference to the law of Quebec in the circumstances of this case. Careful analysis of the relevant Restatement provisions persuades us of the merits of the opposite conclusion.

Section 145 of the Restatement Second provides in subsection (1) that “[t]he rights and liabilities of the parties with respect to an issue are determined by the local law of the state which, with respect to that issue, has the most significant relationship to the occurrence and the parties under the principles stated in § 6.” Sec*651tion 6 of the Restatement, in turn, provides: “(1) A court, subject to constitutional restrictions, will follow a statutory directive of its own state on choice of law. (2) When there is no such directive, the factors relevant to the choice of the applicable rule of law include (a) the needs of the interstate and international systems, (b) the relevant policies of the forum, (c) the relevant policies of other interested states and the relative interests of those states in the determination of the particular issue, (d) the protections of justified expectations, (e) the basic policies underlying the particular field of law, (f) certainty, predictability and uniformity of result, and (g) ease in the determination and application of the law to be applied.”

Applying the choice of law analysis of §§ 145 and 6 to the facts of this case involves a weighing of the relative significance of the various factors that § 6 lists. Of greatest importance for present purposes are the choices of policy emphasized in § 6 (2) (b), (c) and (e). We are not today concerned with a case that offends systemic policy concerns of another state or country, nor do the facts warrant an inference of justified expectations concerning the applicability of anything other than the law of the forum.13 Although the principles of certainty and ease of application must be taken into account, the Restatement cautions against attaching independent weight to these auxiliary factors, noting that they are ancillary to the goal of providing rational, fair choice of law rules. As comment i to § 6 states: “In a rapidly developing area, such as choice of law, it is often more important that good rules be developed than that predictability and uniformity of result should be assured through continued adherence to existing rules.” See also Restatement (Second), Conflict of Laws § 6, comment j (policy in § 6 [2] [g] should “not *652be overemphasized, since it is obviously of greater importance that choice-of-law rules lead to desirable results”).

For assistance in our evaluation of the policy choices set out in §§ 145 (1) and 6 (2), we turn next to § 145 (2) of the Restatement, which establishes black-letter rules of priority to facilitate the application of the principles of § 6 to tort cases. See H. Kay, “Theory into Practice: Choice of Law in the Courts,” 34 Mercer L. Rev. 521, 555 (1983). Section 145 (2) provides: “Contacts to be taken into account in applying the principles of § 6 to determine the law applicable to an issue include: (a) the place where the injury occurred, (b) the place where the conduct causing the injury occurred, (c) the domicil, residence, nationality, place of incorporation and place of business of the parties, and (d) the place where the relationship, if any, between the parties is centered. These contacts are to be evaluated according to their re