107 N.H. 351, 222 A.2d 205 (1966)
The plaintiff is the wife of the defendant and in this action she seeks damages for personal injuries caused by her husband’s alleged negligence in operating a motor vehicle in which she was riding with him.1 The parties now and for some time previous to the accident were domiciled in Lancaster, New Hampshire.2
On the evening of June 26, 1964 the parties left Lancaster for Littleton, New Hampshire, intending to return to their home later that evening.3 This trip took them into Lunenberg, Vermont where the accident occurred.4
The plaintiff moved for a pre-trial order that the substantive law of New Hampshire governs the rights of the parties.5 All questions of law raised by the motion were reserved and transferred without ruling by Leahy, C. J.6 The motion raised the central choice of law question that the court was required to resolve in order to determine which state's standard of care would apply to the host-guest relationship.7
Whether the law of Vermont or the law of New Hampshire governs the rights of the parties?8
In tort actions for automobile host-guest liability, when the parties share a common domicile in one state from which their trip both departed and was intended to return, the law of that common domicile determines the standard of care rather than the law of the place of injury.9
Yes. The five choice-influencing considerations—predictability of results, maintenance of interstate orderliness, simplification of the judicial task, advancement of the forum state's governmental interests, and preference for the sounder rule of law—when applied to the established facts, require New Hampshire law.10 The plaintiff and defendant were domiciled in Lancaster, New Hampshire, at the time of the accident and for a substantial period before it.11 On the evening of June 26, 1964, they left Lancaster for Littleton, New Hampshire, planning to return home the same night, and the accident occurred only because the route briefly entered Lunenberg, Vermont.12
New Hampshire has a direct interest in applying its ordinary negligence rule to its own residents on a trip that began and was meant to end within its borders, while Vermont's guest statute primarily protects hosts, guests, and insurers subject to Vermont jurisdiction in suits brought in Vermont courts.13 The parties' shared New Hampshire domicile and the wholly intrastate character of their planned journey outweigh any interest Vermont might claim from the fortuitous location of the injury.14
New Hampshire law governs the rights of the parties.15
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Duncan dissented.16 He noted that the decision extended Thompson v. Thompson but that earlier case had not applied domicile law to the standard of care for conduct outside the home state.17 The host-guest relationship is not limited to spouses, and the considerations used by the majority furnish no satisfactory guidance when the guest is unrelated to the host or domiciled in a different jurisdiction.18
In Dow v. Larrabee the court had applied the law of the place of injury. Duncan would apply the law of the place where the conduct and injury occurred because that state has the greater interest in prescribing the standard of conduct for an actor who chooses to drive there.19