Phillips v. General Motors Corp.
Montana Supreme Court
995 P.2d 1002 (2000)
A truck manufactured by GM (defendant) in Michigan and purchased used in North Carolina caught fire during a family's drive from their home in Montana to visit relatives in North Carolina, causing a fatal accident in Kansas; the injured child's guardian, Phillips (plaintiff), sued GM in federal court in Montana, and because Montana had no established tort choice-of-law rule, the federal court certified questions to the Montana Supreme Court about which approach and which state's law should apply.
Whether, under the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws, the law of the state where the injury occurred controls a product-liability and wrongful-death action unless another state has a more significant relationship to the particular issue.