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:
Whether, in a crashworthiness case alleging enhanced injuries under the Indiana Products Liability Act, the finder of fact shall apportion fault to the person suffering physical harm when that alleged fault is a proximate cause of the harm for which damages are being sought.
less..
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."
As expressed in prior Indiana appellate decisions, claims for enhanced injuries based on alleged uncrashworthiness have been viewed as separate and distinct from the circumstances relating to the initial collision or event. The issue was the "second collision" involving a manufacturer's failure to exercise reasonable care in the design of a product to protect its users in light of the likelihood that the product could be involved in an accident. Thus, a claimant could recover only for the enhanced injuries caused by the lack of reasonable care in designing a crashworthy product. And the fact that the initial collision was not caused by the product's uncrashworthy design did not preclude such a claim for enhanced injuries. We acknowledge the logical appeal to extend this analysis so as to view any negligence of a claimant in causing the initial collision as therefore irrelevant to determining liability for the "second collision." But two considerations lead to a contrary conclusion.
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.
We conclude that, in a crashworthiness case alleging enhanced injuries under the Indiana Product Liability Act, it is the function of the fact-finder to consider and evaluate the conduct of all relevant actors who are alleged to have caused or contributed to cause the harm for which the plaintiff seeks damages. An assertion that a plaintiff is limiting his claim to "enhanced injuries" caused by only the "second collision" does not preclude the fact-finder from considering evidence of all relevant conduct of the plaintiff reasonably alleged to have contributed to cause the injuries. From that evidence, the jury must then, following argument of counsel and proper instructions from the court, determine whether such conduct satisfies the requirement of proximate cause. The fact-finder may allocate as comparative fault only such fault that it finds to have been a proximate cause of the claimed injuries. And if the fault of more than one actor is found to have been a proximate cause of the claimed injuries, the fact-finder, in its allocation of comparative fault, may consider the relative degree of proximate causation attributable to each of the responsible actors. Thus, while a jury in a crashworthiness case may receive evidence of the plaintiff's conduct alleged to have contributed to cause the claimed injuries, the issue of whether such conduct constitutes proximate cause of the injuries for which damages are sought is a matter for the jury to determine in its evaluation of comparative fault.
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:
- 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.
- Fault can be apportioned to a plaintiff in a crashworthiness case.
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