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Beaulieu v. Beaulieu: An Obituary for Lex Loci and An Approach to Interest Analysis
Get PDFClifford Beaulieu, a guest in his father\u27s automobile, was injured when the vehicle struck a telephone pole in Massachusetts. Both parties were residents of Maine. The trip had originated in Maine and was to terminate there. The son filed an action against his father in the Maine Superior Court, alleging negligent operation of the vehicle. On an agreed statement of facts, the case was reported to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court where the defendant argued for dismissal of the action on the grounds that the doctrine of lex loci delictus, the law of the place of the tort, was applicable and that the Massachusetts guest statute barred recovery. Plaintiff argued that the lex loci doctrine should be abandoned and that the court should adopt an interest analysis approach to choice-of-law issues. The court accepted the plaintiff\u27s argument and held that in tort conflicts cases Maine courts must analyze the competing governmental interests of the involved states. By adopting interest analysis, the court recognized the necessity in every conflicts case of weighing and balancing the policies of the interested states, with the result that neither the law of the forum nor the law of the place of the tort will necessarily always apply. Thus, in Beaulieu v. Beaulieu, Maine law, which imposed a full due care duty on the host, had to be applied both because all relevant governmental interests were centered in Maine and because, correspondingly, Massachusetts had no interest in applying its law to the suit. The court, in finding this approach preferable to the more mechanical traditional doctrine, overruled Maine\u27s lex loci delictus precedents. In bringing Maine conflicts law into line with the interest analysis approach first adopted by the New York courts in Babcock v. Jackson, Beaulieu became an extremely important case in Maine jurisprudence. Beaulieu, however, was a relatively simple case, and the Maine courts must now confront the more difficult task of developing a workable methodology for solving complex conflicts problems in all areas of the law
Insider Trading on Undisclosed Corporate Information: Diamond v. Oreamuno
Get PDFThe New York Court of Appeals recently ruled that a corporation may hold its officers and directors, who use material inside information, accountable for gains realized by them from transactions in the company\u27s stock. The purpose of this note is to analyze Diamond v. Oreamuno in light of the existing federal law and to propose its application in the federal system
An Argument for Housing Reparations
Get PDFThis Article explores recent applications and framing of municipal reparatory housing policies and assesses equal protection challenges, including specific discussion of an emerging case in Evanston, Illinois. Because of recent changes to the Supreme Court’s approach to applying strict scrutiny in equal protection challenges of race-conscious policies as reflected in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, race-based applications of reparations have been criticized as dead on arrival. However, this Article finds that housing-related reparatory policies are dissimilar from affirmative action admissions policies in several ways relevant to the Court’s application of strict scrutiny. Housing reparations policies are more in line with historical reparations policies that have withstood strict scrutiny, and they thus represent one comparatively promising avenue through which reparations may yet be achieved. Finally, this Article anchors these findings in possible applications of reparatory policy orientations in housing, connecting existing failures and challenges in housing policy with the myriad possibilities of a reparatory policy orientation
A Commemorative
Get PDFIn this issue the Maine Law Review joins in the national celebration of the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution. Three distinguished federal judges, all of whom are intimately familiar with that great document, have kindly contributed essays to the Review based on speeches they have earlier given for the Bicentennial. We are happy to present these essays, each of which has an important perspective on the Constitution, as our commemorative on this special occasion
The Constitution Without Tears
Get PDFThe coming plethora of Bicentennial speeches and activities are intended to provide occasions for public figures and private persons to say something helpful to a current and realistic understanding of the role of the Constitution in our daily lives; and, hopefully, something at least modestly expository of our duties as citizens of American constitutional democracy
Pornography Commissions and the First Amendment: On Constitutional Values and Constitutional Facts
Get PDFThe interlinked questions of free speech, obscenity, and pornography are contextually sensitive—as are many other great issues of constitutional principle—to both normative and factual arguments; that is, much of the disagreement in the discussion of these questions centers on the proper interplay of constitutional values and facts. To what extent, for example, should constitutional values be sensitive to empirical research about the consequences of pornography distribution and use? If sensitive at all, how sensitive? Must the state, for example, satisfy a heavy burden of justification in terms of showing harm caused if it is to abridge pornography distribution and use, or may it show a much weaker case? If weaker, how much weaker? May anything count as an appropriate justification, or do constitutional values impose at least some constraints on what may count as a justification at all? This cluster of questions has now come very much to the forefront of serious constitutional discussion of free speech, obscenity, and pornography because the Final Report of the Attorney General\u27s Commission on Pornography (hereinafter Commission Report), published July 1986, has put its argument much in these terms. The Commission Report argues that a quite light burden of justification is required to support the abridgement of access to pornographic materials, and that this burden of justification is satisfied by the evidence the Commission gathered concerning the harm caused by pornography distribution
Wilderness, Trust, and Finality: The Baxter State Park Snowmobile Dispute
Get PDFThe recent controversies surrounding the use of snowmobiles in Baxter State Park exemplify the human essence of the trust relationship and the law\u27s awkwardness in addressing the inherently nonlegalistic principles of trust. Baxter State Park is an area of 201,018 acres in northern Maine, purchased by former Governor Percival Proctor Baxter and then donated to the State of Maine in trust. The park includes Mount Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine and the head of the Appalachian Trail. As Chief Justice McKusick wrote in a recent decision construing the trust, in its combination of size, uniqueness, permanence, and vision, his gift of Baxter State Park to the people of Maine has no equal.” This Article explores those attributes of the Baxter trust—uniqueness, permanence, and vision—that embody its highest aspirations and place it at the center of legal controversy. The particular controversy addressed by this Article concerns the compatibility of a modern form of recreation—the snowmobile—with the paramount purpose of Baxter\u27s gift: to create and preserve an area in which persons could have a wilderness experience.
Handicapped Workers: Who Should Bear the Burden of Proving Job Qualifications?
Get PDFJoining a growing number of jurisdictions in 1973, the Maine Legislature amended the fair employment sections of the Maine Human Rights Act (the MHRA) to extend equal employment opportunity protection to all physically disabled workers. Nearly a decade later the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, defined unlawful employer treatment of handicapped workers in Maine Human Rights Commission v. Canadian Pacific, Ltd. The Law Court held that an employment decision based on a worker\u27s handicap constitutes an admission of discrimination that shifts the burden of persuasion to the employer to prove either that all workers with similar handicaps are unqualified or that the individual worker in question is not qualified because of reasonably probable health or safety risks. The Law Court reaffirmed its Canadian Pacific holding in Higgins v. Maine Central Railroad. Highlighting the two separate elements of proof allocated to an employer, Higgins held that an employer cannot prove a probable health or safety risk absent an individualized assessment of the worker\u27s handicap at the time the employment decision is made. Although Maine\u27s employers may feel that both cases place an unusually high burden of justification on their employment decisions, the cases are consistent with traditional equal employment opportunity law. Nevertheless, the cases did not present the Law Court with an adequate opportunity to develop an analytic model which fully addresses the distinguishing characteristics of handicap equal employment opportunity law