Fault Can Be Apportioned to Plaintiff in Crashworthiness Case

February 8, 2011

Today, in Green v. Ford Motor Co., Case No. 94S00-1007-CQ-348, the Indiana Supreme Court answered the following certified question in the affirmative:

In Green, the plaintiff was severely injured when his vehicle left the road, struck a guardrail, rolled down an embankment, and came to rest upside down in a ditch. He filed suit against Ford, claiming that his injuries were substantially enhanced because of the alleged defects in the vehicle’s restraint system. Green moved in limine to exclude any evidence of his alleged contributory negligence on grounds that any conduct by him in causing the vehicle to leave the road and strike the guardrail is not relevant to whether Ford’s negligent design of the restraint system caused him to suffer injuries he would not have otherwise suffered. Ford asserts that Green’s product liability lawsuit is subject to Indiana’s statutory comparative fault principles, which require the jury to consider the fault of Green in causing or contributing to the physical harm he suffered. The Southern District of Indiana certified the issue to the Court to answer.

The Court described that the “crashworthiness” doctrine made manufacturers liable “for that portion of the damage or injury caused by the defective design over and above the damage or injury that probably would have occurred as a result of the impact or collision absent the defective design.”

Those considerations were that this doctrine was created under the common law or early, strict-liability product liability statutes, rather than under “the Indiana Product Liability Act, which, since 1995, has expressly required liability to be determined in accordance with the principles of comparative fault.” I.C. § 34-20-8-1. Because of this statutory language, a jury can apportion fault to the plaintiff in a crashworthiness case.

This decision will make crashworthiness cases more complex. While manufacturers will be able to argue comparative fault as a defense, given the harm that a crashworthiness case covers, we expect that plaintiffs will, in the future, conduct discovery designed to win on this issue in motions for summary judgment. Thus, while this opinion decided the ultimate legal question, there will likely be much litigation on how this basic decision applies to particular sets of facts.

Lessons:

1. Crashworthiness cases focus on injury caused by the defective design over and above the damage or injury that probably would have occurred as a result of the impact or collision absent the defective design.
2. Fault can be apportioned to a plaintiff in a crashworthiness case.