Justified Suits or Jilted Brides – An Analysis of the Illinois Breach of Promise Act and the Case of Buttitta v. Salerno

Abstract

Most of us have heard the old adage, “hell hath no fury like a scorned woman.” Ask most young women what they dream about when they imagine their wedding day and most will describe for you a day filled with flowers, a white dress, pretty shoes, and a band – usually outdoors, on a beach, at a country club, or a banquet hall. If poised with the question of “what would you do if your fiance called off the wedding,” many things may come to a woman’s mind – for Dominique Buttitta, a former bride-to-be from Macedonia, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, taking her ex-fiance, Vito Salerno, to court was at the top of her list. When Vito broke off the engagement, Dominique, an attorney herself, may have taken some comfort in the fact she resided in Illinois, one of the twenty-two (22) states remaining, of the fifty United States (U.S.), that still allows jilted brides-to-be to sue under a form of a “breach of promise to marry” act.In Illinois, that act is currently known as literally that – Illinois’s Breach of Promise Act – although it has only been known by that name, or in fact even existed as a law on the books, since 1947. Prior to 1947, Illinois brides had to sue under Illinois’ common law action for a breach of a promise to marry. Due to rampant abuse of the common law action, in 1935 the Illinois legislature passed the “Heart Balm Act” which made it “unlawful” for a woman to sue her ex-fiance under the formerly known common law action for breach of a promise to marry. Despite the growing decline in popularity nationally around this same time, Illinois’ Heart Balm statute was challenged and deemed unconstitutional under the Illinois Constitution in the 1946 decision of Heck v. Schupp.In reaction to the Heck decision, the Illinois Legislature passed Illinois’s Breach of Promise Act, a much more restricted version of the prior cause of action under the common law. This restricted version passed constitutional muster in Smith v. Hill and has remained unchallenged and codified under Illinois law ever since. In the past two decades only a handful of opinions were dedicated to the discussion of a cause of action under the Act. Despite this statute’s largely unused status, this did not keep Miss Buttitta from filing suit under it on December 10, 2010, seeking over $95,000 in damages.