Ledesma v. Jack Stewart Produce, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
816 F.2d 482 (1987)
Alfonso Ledesma and other California-resident plaintiffs were injured in Arizona when their van was struck by a tractor driven by Arkansas-resident John Wayne Mize and owned by Oklahoma-based Jack Stewart Produce, Inc. (JSP) (defendant), with Oklahoma-resident Jack Stewart also named individually; Ledesma sued in California federal court, but the defendants moved to dismiss based on California's one-year statute of limitations, while Arizona and Oklahoma each had two-year periods and Arkansas had three years. The district court applied California law and dismissed, and Ledesma appealed.
Whether, when faced with a true conflict of laws in a multistate dispute, the forum court should apply the law of the state whose interests would be more impaired if its law were not applied.