On June 1, 1978, the Supreme Court decided Merenoff v. Merenoff, 76 N.J. 535 (1978). Involving two cases, Justice Handler’s unanimous opinion for the Supreme Court addressed “the issue of whether the claim of a husband or wife for damages for personal injuries arising from a domestic or household accident attributable to the negligence of the other spouse is barred by the doctrine of interspousal tort immunity.” The history and evolution of interspousal immunity, however, which Justice Handler laid out at length, played a big role in the Court’s decision to abrogate the immunity in its ruling in these cases.
Especially important were Immer v. Risko, 56 N.J. 482 (1970), which “abrogated interspousal immunity in automobile negligence suits,” as Justice Handler summarized it, and Eule v. Eule Motor Sales, 34 N.J. 537 (1961), where ” there was a perceptible movement away from the universal application of the traditional immunity doctrine,” as the Court “held that a wife was entitled to bring a tort action against a partnership of which her husband was a member for injuries negligently inflicted by him.” Those decisions (among others in New Jersey), along with the fact that most other jurisdictions “have abrogated the concept in varying degrees,” and that ” many immunities in the evolution of the law have withered or perished as legal relics not fit for survival in contemporary times,” freed the Court to consider the viability of arguments for the continuation of spousal immunity.
Justice Handler observed that “the potential danger to marital tranquillity posed by the availability of a legal action for personal injuries based on negligence between spouses” had been a key basis for spousal immunity. But he rightly noted that “the cohesiveness of a marriage may be jeopardized as much by barring a cause of action as by allowing it.” It was better to allow the parties to the marriage “the choice to sue, or not to sue.”
“The second major objection to eliminating interspousal tort immunity is the risk of fraudulent and collusive actions against insurance companies.” Justice Handler cited cases in which courts, in New Jersey and elsewhere, had “expressed confidence that our judicial system is well-equipped to sift out fraud.” Based on that confidence “in the resilience and versatility of our courts to address the dangers of fraud and collusion, in either their most virulent forms or in their less noxious guises of simple pettiness or overreaching, interspousal immunity from tort actions cannot be sustained upon these grounds.”
Ultimately, the Court ruled that, in most respects, there was no basis to treat injuries negligently inflicted between spouses differently than injuries in any other context, though Justice Handler did offer some caveats. The Court thus abolished spousal immunity. Justice Handler stated that “in view of the significant change in the law represented by the decision in these cases, that the effect and application of our holding, except as to the cases now adjudicated, shall be prospective only.”
