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Interspousal Immunity-Automobile Negligence

University of Richmond Law Review

At common law neither spouse could maintain an action against the other. With the passage of the Married Woman's Acts in the mid-nineteenth century it was agreed that a cause of action would then lie for property torts, but there was confusion as to whether the statutes gave a new cause of action for personal torts between the spouses. It therefore became a question of statutory interpretation, with the terminology of most of the statutes being consistent with either conclusion. The first courts to interpret the statutes held that no cause of action had been conferred and thereby laid the …