Adams v. Buffalo Forge Co.

• Decision Date: 05 April 1982
• Citation: 443 A.2d 932
• Parties: Sheldon E. ADAMS, et al. v. BUFFALO FORGE COMPANY.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 932

443 A.2d 932

Sheldon E. ADAMS, et al. v. BUFFALO FORGE COMPANY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Nov. 10, 1981.

Decided April 5, 1982.

McTeague, Higbee & Tucker, Maurice A. Libner (orally), Brunswick, for plaintiffs.

Verrill & Dana, James G. Goggin (orally), John W. Philbrick, Portland, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and GODFREY, NICHOLS, ROBERTS, CARTER, VIOLETTE and WATHEN, JJ.

ROBERTS, Justice.

Sheldon and Lisa Adams appeal from a summary judgment in favor of the defendant Buffalo Forge Company entered in Superior Court, Sagadahoc County. The plaintiffs contend that the Superior Court erred when it applied Maine law rather than the law of New York or Massachusetts. In the alternative, they urge us to reexamine the requirement of privity in products liability actions and, further, to here apply Maine's strict liability statute, 14 M.R.S.A. § 221. We vacate the judgment of the Superior Court and remand this case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

The facts are not in dispute. The defendant is a New York manufacturer of industrial equipment. In 1966 Bath Iron Works, the plaintiff's employer, ordered a drill press from Chandler & Farquhar Company, an independent Massachusetts dealer of the defendant's equipment. In early 1967 Chandler & Farquhar purchased the machine from the defendant and requested the defendant ship it directly to Bath Iron Works. In February 1967 the defendant shipped the machine to Bath Iron Works. On June 13, 1979, Sheldon Adams was injured by the drill press while at work. He has alleged that as he was attempting to change drill bits his arm came into contact with a power switch on the front of the machine which caused the machine to turn on, resulting in injury to him.

Plaintiffs filed suit against the defendant in February 1980. In Count One Sheldon Adams alleges that his injuries were proximately caused by an unreasonably dangerous and defective condition of the defendant's drill press which allowed the drill press to turn on while he was attempting to change bits. Count Two alleges that the defendant was negligent in the manufacture of the drill press. In Count Three, Lisa Adams, the wife of Sheldon Adams, alleges damages resulting from loss of consortium, mental anguish and nursing care and services she provided following the injury.

The Superior Court, following a motion for summary judgment brought by the defendant, entered judgment in favor of defendant and against plaintiffs. ¹

I. Choice of Law

On appeal the plaintiffs have raised three arguments. Plaintiffs initially contend that the Superior Court erred when it applied the law of Maine rather than the law of New York, the place of manufacture, or the law of Massachusetts, the situs of the dealer, when it dismissed the plaintiffs' negligence claim. We do not agree.

Plaintiffs, being fully cognizant of our recent opinions in Burke v. Hamilton Beach Division, Me., 424 A.2d 145 (1981) and Hurd v. Hurd, Me., 423 A.2d 960 (1981), wherein we decided that lack of privity constituted a bar to recovery for product liability negligence claims, have argued that Maine's only interest in this case, if it has any interest at all, is in ensuring that Maine's citizens are compensated for injuries caused by defective, negligently manufactured machinery. According to the plaintiffs, Maine's policy interest is here best served by applying the law of New York or Massachusetts, which do not require privity as a prerequisite to recovery, rather than applying the "moribund" doctrine announced in Burke or Hurd.

Plaintiffs have correctly noted that we have heretofore abandoned the rigid lex loci delicti choice of law rule. Beaulieu v. Beaulieu, Me., 265 A.2d 610 (1970). In Beaulieu this Court was confronted with a choice of law issue between the applicability of the Massachusetts automobile host-passenger rule requiring a showing of gross negligence on the defendant-host's part as a prerequisite to recovery by the plaintiff-passenger and Maine law which did not distinguish degrees of negligence on the part of a defendant driver. Id. at 611-12. In Beaulieu we cited favorably the approach of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 379, comment d, p. 9 (Tent. Draft No. 9) (1964) which implemented the use of the more flexible "most significant contacts and relationships" test. 265 A.2d at 616-17. Since our decision in Beaulieu the official draft of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws (1971) has been approved and published by the American Law Institute. Sections 145 and 146 of the Restatement (Second) continue to advocate the "most significant contacts and relationships" test promulgated by the earlier drafts. ² Section 146 now provides that "(i)n an action for a personal injury, the local law of the state where the injury occurred determines the rights and liabilities of the parties, unless, with respect to the particular issue, some other state has a more significant relationship ... to the occurrence and the parties...." Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 146 (1971) (emphasis added). We think the more flexible approach of the Restatement §§ 145 & 146 should apply to personal injury actions sounding in tort and involving products liability as well as those actions which involve automobile negligence.

Though not dispositive of the issue, it is not denied that the injury here did, in fact, occur in Maine. Moreover, this is not a case in which the only connection is the fortuitous fact that the injury was sustained in Maine. In addition to being the place of injury, Maine is the location to which the defendant-manufacturer directly shipped the product. Maine is the state in which the product was put to its intended use. The buyer of the product and the employer of Sheldon Adams is sited in Maine. Both plaintiffs, Sheldon and Lisa Adams, are residents of Maine. Suit was brought in the courts of Maine. Reviewing these factors in the light of the contacts and relationships test enunciated above we conclude that the law of Maine must govern the case at bar. Since we find it appropriate to apply the law of Maine, we also conclude that the case at bar does, in fact, compel a reexamination of our decisions in Burke v. Hamilton Beach Division and Hurd v. Hurd.

II. Stare Decisis

Before we reexamine the opinions expressed in Burke and Hurd, we must first confront the effect of the doctrine of stare decisis. The underlying rationale of the doctrine of stare decisis is the obvious need to promote consistency and uniformity of decisions. See Hertz v. Woodman, 218 U.S. 205, 212, 30 S.Ct. 621, 622, 54 L.Ed. 1001, 1009 (1910). The doctrine has been said to serve as "a brake upon legal change to be applied in the interests of continuity." Amoskeag Trust Co. v. Trustees of Dartmouth College, 89 N.H. 471, 474, 200 A. 786, 788 (1938). While we recognize the unquestioned need for the uniformity and certainty the doctrine provides, we have also previously recognized the dangers of a blind application of the doctrine merely to enshrine forever earlier decisions of this court. See Beaulieu v. Beaulieu, Me., 265 A.2d 610, 613 (1970); e.g., Walker v. Armco Steel Corp., 446 U.S. 740, 749, 100 S.Ct. 1978, 1984, 64 L.Ed.2d 659, 667 (1980). When principles fail to produce just results, this Court has found a departure from precedent necessary to fulfill its role of reasoned decision making. Anderson v. Neal, Me., 428 A.2d 1189, 1191 (1981). See Black v. Solmitz, Me., 409 A.2d 634 (1979); Davies v. City of Bath, Me., 364 A.2d 1269 (1976); Beaulieu, 265 A.2d 610.

Stare decisis embodies the important social policy of continuity in law. Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U.S. 106, 119, 60 S.Ct. 444, 451, 84 L.Ed. 604, 612 (1940). The doctrine, however, "is a principle of policy and not a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision, however recent and questionable, when such adherence involves collision with a prior doctrine more embracing in its scope, intrinsically sounder, and verified by experience." Id., 309 U.S. at 119, 60 S.Ct. at 451, 84 L.Ed. at 612. Whether the doctrine should be applied or avoided is a decision which rests in the discretion of the court. Hertz v. Woodman, 218 U.S. at 212, 30 S.Ct. at 622, 54 L.Ed. at 1009; Amoskeag Trust, 89 N.H. at 474, 200 A. at 788. That discretion must be exercised with a view to whether adherence to past error or departure from precedent constitutes the greater evil to be suffered.

Courts properly seek to create a framework of continuity amidst a universe of continuous change in order that those citizens and litigants who rely upon the legal doctrines and principles they announce may conduct their day-to-day affairs without fear that their reasonable expectations will be torn asunder by an unforeseen and radical departure from precedent. Conversely, "there should be greater readiness to abandon a rule of doubtful adequacy in dispensing exact justice, when the rule to be discarded may not reasonably be supposed to have determined the conduct of litigants." Beaulieu, 265 A.2d at 613, citing B. Cardozo The Nature of the Judicial Process 150-51 (1921). These considerations have resulted in a reluctance on the part of appellate courts to depart from stare decisis when an abandonment of past precedent would interfere with the valid reliance interests of litigants arising from contract rights, real property rights or rights to property by descent.

On the other hand, here we discern no reliance interests which will be unjustifiably infringed upon by our reexamination of Burke v. Hamilton Beach Division and Hurd v. Hurd. Those cases, we have determined, constituted our first declaration that lack of privity could provide a defense in an action sounding in tort. Moreover, in this context, we think it significant that our Legislature over twelve years ago resolved the policy considerations presently before us in a manner contrary to the holdings of Burke and...