Alexander v. Seaboard Air Line Railroad Company

• Decision Date: 19 August 1971
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 2258.
• Citation: 346 F. Supp. 320
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of North Carolina
• Parties: Rosser F. ALEXANDER, Plaintiff, v. SEABOARD AIR LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, a corporation, et al., Defendants.

346 F. Supp. 320

Rosser F. ALEXANDER, Plaintiff, v. SEABOARD AIR LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, a corporation, et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 2258.

United States District Court, W. D. North Carolina, Charlotte Division.

August 19, 1971.

James L. Cole, Cole & Chesson, Charlotte, N. C., Paul D. Rheingold, Speiser, Shumate, Geoghan, Krause & Rheingold, New York City, Modrall, Sperling, Roehl, Harris & Sisk, Albuquerque, N. M., for plaintiff.

Thomas R. Eller, Jr., Cansler, Lockhart & Eller, Charlotte, N. C., for defendant, Seaboard Air Line Railroad Co.

H. C. Hewson, Jones, Hewson & Woolard, Charlotte, N. C., for defendants, Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesel-Schaft, and Volkswagen of America, Inc.

J. J. Wade, Jr., Wardlow, Knox, Caudle & Wade, Charlotte, N. C., for defendant, Capitol Car Distributors, Inc.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

WOODROW WILSON JONES, Chief Judge.

This matter is before the court upon a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by the defendants, Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesel-Schaft, a corporation (VWAG), and Volkswagen of America, Inc., a corporation (VWOA).

After careful consideration of the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, affidavits, briefs and argument of counsel, the court enters its findings and conclusions in this Memorandum of Decision.

The original action was instituted by plaintiff on June 30, 1967, for the recovery of monetary damages for personal injuries alleged to have been caused by the negligence of the defendant, Seaboard Air Line Railroad Company (Railroad), resulting from a collision between plaintiff's Volkswagen automobile and a moving freight train. On July 9, 1968, more than one year later, plaintiff filed a Four-Count Amended Complaint against the Railroad, and three additional defendants, VWAG, VWOA, and Capitol Car Distributors, Inc., (Capitol). Count I contains allegations of negligence against Railroad only, while in Count II allegations are made against VWAG, VWOA, and Capitol of negligence in the design, testing, manufacture, construction, assembly, sale and marketing of the Volkswagen automobile in which plaintiff was injured. Count III sets forth allegations against VWAG, VWOA, and Capitol of breach of implied warranty and strict liability, and Count IV charges VWAG, VWOA, and Capitol with intentional or careless misrepresentations. Immediately prior to oral argument on the Motion for Summary Judgment, plaintiff announced he desired to take a dismissal as to the defendant Capitol, and that he would abandon the alleged causes of action in Counts III and IV, leaving only Count I against the Railroad, which is not involved in this Motion, and Count II against VWAG and VWOA.

On the night of February 6, 1967, plaintiff was operating his 1965 Model Volkswagen sedan automobile in a Northerly direction on North Carolina Rural Paved Road #1377 when he collided with Railroad's 114-ton locomotive engine pulling twenty-two freight cars and traveling East. The collision occurred at Stout's Crossing in Union County where Road #1377 crosses Railroad's tracks at approximate right angles. The Volkswagen automobile struck the engine on its right side about eighteen feet from the front end, and immediately after the impact the car burst into flames. The plaintiff and Railroad's engineer are the only eye witnesses to the collision. Both have been deposed and the plaintiff estimates the speed of his automobile at the moment of impact to be from five to ten miles per hour, and the engineer places the speed of the train at forty-five miles per hour. The automobile was sold to a junk yard and crushed shortly after the collision and no one is known to have any of its parts and the locomotive engine has been examined from stem to stern. So, it seems that all available facts are now known and are before the court.

While the plaintiff alleges negligence of design, construction, manufacture, assembly, etc., of the 1965 Model Volkswagen automobile, he admits in his brief that his claim is based upon negligent design only. On Page 4 of plaintiff's brief there appears the following:

"We concede that we make no claim that there was a defect in the VW which caused it to hit the train. We concede that all of our allegations about the defectiveness of the VW relate to it post-collision. And we concede that our claim in the Second Cause of Action is that there was a defective design, not construction, of the Alexander VW, and all those like it. It is plaintiff's contention that with reasonable care under the standards then existing for automotive manufacturers in 1966, a vehicle should not have been designed with a gas cap that could fly off in a collision, with a tank that would deform, with a front end that allowed crushing of the tank, with an improper separation of the trunk from the passenger compartment, and with a flammable interior. All of these allegations are what are commonly grouped under the concept of the `safe interior,' the `second collision,' or `crashworthiness.'"

The plaintiff therefore contends, in effect, that because of the negligence in design, he received injuries he would not have otherwise received or, in the alternative, his injuries would not have been as serious. He does not contend nor allege that any of these defects in design caused or contributed to the collision.

There is no genuinie issue or dispute as to any material or salient fact insofar as this Motion is concerned. The question to be determined is: What duty does an automobile manufacturer owe a user of its product under the facts of this case? Plaintiff's alleged causes of action against the defendants, VWAG and VWOA, will stand or fall upon the answer to this question. This court holds that it is a question of law for the court and that summary judgment is now appropriate.

The two leading federal court decisions on this issue hold that the question is one of law for the court. In Evans v. General Motors Corp., 359 F.2d 822 at 824 (7th Cir. 1966), cert. den. 385 U.S. 836, 87 S.Ct. 83, 17 L.Ed.2d 70, the court said:

"The major question before us is the nature of the duty which an automobile manufacturer owes to users of its product. This presents an issue of law for the Court."

In Larsen v. General Motors Corp., 391 F.2d 495, at 498 (8th Cir. 1968), the court held:

"Both parties agree that the question of a manufacturer's duty in the design of an automobile or of any chattel is a question of law for the court. The decisional law is in accord."

The Fourth Circuit said in Bland v. Norfolk and Southern Rail Road Co., 406 F.2d 863 (4th Cir. 1969):

"Summary judgment is to avoid a useless trial; it is a device to make possible the prompt disposition of controversies on their merits without a trial, if in essence there is no real dispute as to the salient facts."

This case is here by reason of diversity of citizenship, and the answer to the question involved must be found under North Carolina law. A careful search reveals no North Carolina Supreme Court decision on this exact point. The plaintiff admits that this is a case of first impression in this State but contends that this court should find that the North Carolina Court "would today adopt the rule that a manufacturer must with reasonable care design his vehicle to make it safe to have an accident in (a duty of making a vehicle `crashworthy' to use a convenient shorthand)."

An examination of North Carolina decisions reveals that the law imposes upon the manufacturer of an automobile the duty to use reasonable care in its manufacture and to make reasonable inspection of the construction in the plant where the vehicle is made. In Gwyn v. Lucky City Motors, Inc., 252 N.C. 123, 113 S.E.2d 302, the court followed the rule laid down in MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., 217 N.Y. 382, 111 N.E. 1050, and the fourth circuit case of General Motors Corp. v. Johnson, 137 F. 2d 320, which applied West Virginia law, when it quoted and approved the following from Johnson:

"The overwhelming weight of authority is to the effect that the manufacturer of a truck, like the one here in question, owes a duty to the public, irrespective of contract, to use reasonable care in its manufacture and to make reasonable inspection of the construction in the plant where the truck was manufactured."

The North Carolina rule to measure a manufacturer's responsibility for his products has been declared in numerous cases. He is not an insurer but his obligation to those who use his product is tested by the law of negligence. He must operate with that degree of care which a reasonably prudent person would use in similar circumstances. The court has held that reasonable care must be used in designing the article or product, Swaney v. Peden Steel Co., 259 N.C. 531, 131 S.E.2d 601; in selecting proper materials with which to make the article or product, Wilson v. Lowe's Asheboro Hardware, Inc., 259 N.C. 660, 131 S.E.2d 501; and in inspection of products for hidden defects, Gwyn v. Lucky City Motors, Inc., supra; DuPree v. Batts, 276 N.C. 68, 170 S.E.2d 918.

While it is clear the North Carolina rule imposes liability upon a manufacturer for negligence in design which causes the accident, there is no case in which the court has extended the rule to allow recovery where the negligent design of the product did not cause the accident but only increased or aggravated the damages. In fact, very few jurisdictions have extended the rule that far. The leading case for this theory— Larsen v. General Motors Corporation, supra,—and upon which the plaintiff relies, holds that a manufacturer's duty is to design and construct an automobile that is reasonably fit for its intended use and free from hidden defects that could render it unsafe for such use, and extends the "intended use" doctrine to include injury producing collisions. Larsen goes further and holds that "no rational basis exists for limiting recovery to situations where the defect in design or manufacture was the causative factor of the...