Is The Supreme Court Really Going To Regulate Choice Of Law Involving States?

Abstract

INTRODUCTION|It started with the most ordinary of fact patterns-an auto accident. In 1968, an employee of the state of Nevada, driving a state car while on official business, was involved in an automobile wreck in California. The California plaintiffs sued the state of Nevada in a California state court on a respondeat superior theory and won a verdict of a bit over $1 million. Nevada protested on a variety of grounds- sovereign immunity, comity, and the Full Faith and Credit Clause - and alternatively argued that if it were liable it should be liable only to the amount allowed in the Nevada Tort Claims Act, which was $25,000.|In Nevada v. Hall, the United States Supreme Court said to Nevada: "Tough luck." Because the case was in state court, the Eleventh Amendment immunity-that the Supreme Court had developed in several implausibly reasoned cases limiting suits against states in federal courts-did not apply. As to common law doctrines such as sovereign immunity and comity, the Supreme Court stated those were matters of state law and not constitutional guarantees. Finally, as to the Full Faith and Credit Clause, which had at times been a significant regulator of state choice-of-law doctrine, the Court held that full-faith-and-credit principles did not force California to recognize Nevada's tort claims laws, including its damage limitations...