Bahlman v. Hudson Motor Car Co.

• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: BUTZEL
• Citation: Bahlman v. Hudson Motor Car Co., 290 Mich. 683, 288 N.W. 309 (Mich. 1939)
• Decision Date: 09 November 1939
• Docket Number: No. 9.,9.
• Parties: BAHLMAN v. HUDSON MOTOR CAR CO.

290 Mich. 683

288 N.W. 309

BAHLMAN

v.HUDSON MOTOR CAR CO.

No. 9.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Nov. 9, 1939.

Action by Henry R. Bahlman against the Hudson Motor Car Company for injuries sustained when automobile which plaintiff purchased from defendant overturned. From a judgment for plaintiff, the defendant appeals.

Affirmed, on condition of remittitur.

CHANDLER, J., dissenting, and WIEST, J., dissenting in part.Appeal from Circuit Court, Wayne County; William B. Brown, judge.

Argued before the Entire Bench.

Vandeveer, Vandeveer & Haggerty, of Detroit, for appellant.

Walter M. Nelson, of Detroit, and Dale Souter, of Grand Rapids, for appellee.

BUTZEL, Chief Justice.

I am not in accord with the foregoing opinion. Plaintiff, as a traveling shoe salesman, was in the habit of driving his car 30,000 or more miles during a single year. Previous to the accident which gives rise to this litigation, he had an automobile accident in 1935 and two more accidents in 1936. Plaintiff testified that through newspaper advertising he became particularly aware of new safety features which had been developed in the automotive industry, and was interested in purchasing a car which had a ‘safety top,’ and that he and a salesman of the Oakdale Garage, an authorized distributor of defendant's cars, discussed the construction of the top of the car at some length and that on the strength of the assurances made to him, plaintiff finally agreed to purchase a 1936 Model Hudson Eight Sedan. In the course of the demonstration, plaintiff was shown various pieces of literature descriptive of defendant's products, which it had printed and caused to be distributed to its dealers for exhibition to the public. In this printed matter the Hudson car was described as ‘A Rugged Fortress of Safety,’ with the following attributes: ‘Beneath the bigness and beauty, the safest car on today's highway, with the world's first safety engineering. Safeness combined with the first bodies all of steel; bodies introduced last year by Hudson's and now brought to new heights of strength and beauty with an improved seamless steel roof.’ In another pamphlet it was stated: ‘How, What, Why about the 1936 Hudsons and Terraplanes. A steel top which is a smooth, solid unit with the body shell. There are no seams or joints in the roof and body structure, just as a complete steel body made from a single sheet of steel.’

As a matter of fact, the roof was not solid and seamless, but consisted of two pieces of steel which had been welded together at a line approximately above the driver's seat. From the weld jagged metal drippings hung down all along the seam. The masonite lining with which the under portion of the roof was finished and covered, fell off as a result of the accident, thus allowing plaintiff's head to strike the jagged edges of the seam. It was defendant'stheory that plaintiff's injuries were produced by indentation or ‘stoving in’ of the roof when the car overturned, and that the presence of the seam did not cause the laceration of plaintiff's scalp. By its verdict the jury found otherwise. There is ample testimony to support that finding.

There can be no doubt that if plaintiff was entitled to rely on them, defendant's representations amounted to express warranties of quality and construction. Curby v. Mastenbrook, 288 Mich. 676, 286 N.W. 123. Likewise, there is no doubt that the representations were false. Inquiry into the foundations of defendant's alleged liability is dismissed by the foregoing opinion on the theory that plaintiff's injuries were not the ‘natural and probable consequences of defendant's wrong and reasonably within the contemplation of the parties.’ I agree that the scope of the warranty and the proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries must be determined, but on both questions I feel forced to differ in result from Mr. Justice CHANDLER.

Defendant represented that the roof of its motor cars was particularly safe because made from one piece of steel. So far as appears in the record or common experience, the construction of the top of an automobile, whether it is of one or many steel sections, does not ordinarily affect the safety of the purchaser or others riding in a car under the normal conditions of travel. It is not suggested that welds in the roof would make the occupants of an automobile either more or less susceptible to injury from bumps or defects in the highway, lightning, hail, or other natural forces. There was testimony that the condition of the roof does not in the slightest degree affect the driving of the car or its efficiency in accelerating or stopping. Barring the most unpredictable eventualities, the only time that the strength and construction of the roof assume importance is when the car is overturned. Then an all-steel roof of solid construction may prevent injuries which formerly occurred when the tops of automobiles were fashioned from individual sections of wood or wood and metal and thus were easily demolished. The safety of an automobile roof is thus tested after an untoward accident of some sort has taken place. If defendant's representations are to be given any meaning at all, they must be taken to warrant the increased protection of the particular type roof when the car is sudenly overturned, or when some foreign body, as another colliding car, is forced against it.

If this is true, I cannot believe that defendant attempted to distinguish in its representations between accidents involving negligence of the purchaser or some other person, and accidents occurring without any negligence. In common experience automobiles do not ordinarily overturn unless somebody has failed to use due care. There is absolutely no evidence that defendant sought to limit its responsibility to sheer ‘acts of God’ where the car was upset without any human fault or through the negligence of a third party. Certainly, a prospective purchaser of the car would never have acceded to such a limitation.

As I read it, the opinion of Mr. Justice CHANDLER, in effect, introduces the defense of contributory negligence into an action for breach of warranty, a procedure for which their is no reason nor authority. See Challis v. Hartloff, 136 Kan. 823, 18 P.2d 199. Under such rule, although a manufacturer had falsely advertised that a windshield was made of shatterproof glass, as in the now famous case of Baxter v. Ford Motor Co., 168 Wash. 456, 12 P.2d 409,15 P.2d 1118,88 A.L.R. 521, he would be allowed to escape the consequences of that deliberate misrepresentation because the plaintiff was exceeding the speed limit when a pebble flew up and shattered the glass. I find nothing in Greco v. S. S. Kresge Co., 277 N.Y. 26, 12 N.E.2d 557, 115 A.L.R. 1020, cited in the foregoing opinion even remotely compelling such a conclusion.

It is, of course, true that the breach of warranty must have been proximately responsible for the damages for which he sues. Obviously anticipating that his car might turn over, plaintiff purchased a Hudson car on the assurance that it had a unisteel top. Plaintiff drove his car in that belief, and while so driving, the car overturned. The impact broke, the protective masonite layer of the roof, exposing the jagged edges of the seam which had been warranted not to exist. Plaintiff's head was thrown against this seam and injured. In my opinion the chain of proximate cause was strikingly established. See Baxter v. Ford Motor Co., supra. If the representations had been true, there would have been no welded seam, no jagged edges, no consequent cutting of plaintiff's scalp. ‘But for’ defendant's breach, the injury would not have occurred.See Camp v. Wilson, 258 Mich. 38, 241 N.W. 844. It is undoubtedly true that the negligence of the driver caused the car to overturn, but defendant's representations were not for the purpose of avoiding an accident, but in order to avoid or lessen the serious damages that might result therefrom. The intervening force of negligence by a customer was readily and reasonably foreseeable. See Morrison v. City of Ironwood, 189 Mich. 117, 155 N.W. 477,Anderson v. Newport Mining Co., 202 Mich. 204, 168 N.W. 523, also Feezer ‘Manufacturer's Liability,’ 37 Mich.Law Rev. 1, 19-23. The particular construction of the roof of defendant's cars was represented as protection against the consequences of just such careless driving as actually took place. Once the anticipated overturning of the car did occur, it would be illogical to excuse defendant from responsibility for these very consequences. See, Green ‘Are There Dependable Rules of Causation?’ 77 Univ. of Penn.Law Rev. 601, 623-625.

The liability which underlies the above discussion is for breach of warranty. Plaintiff's recovery in the court below seems to have been based on the doctrine of Baxter v. Ford Motor Co., supra, and defendant itself has cited the case with apparent approval in its brief. For this reason it is unnecessary to discuss at great length the principles there announced. The case has been widely approved by current writers. 46 Harvard Law Review 161; 18 Cornell Law Quarterly 445; Feezer, ‘Manufacturer's Liability,’ 37 Mich.Law Rev. 1; Jeanblanc, ‘Manufacturers' Liability to Persons Other than their Immediate Vendees,’ 24 Va.Law Rev. 134. It is true that it was not followed by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Rachlin v. Libby-Owens-Ford Glass Co., 96 F.2d 597, upon which Mr. Justice CHANDLER relies, although Judge Swan there took ocasion to remark that it had received favorable comment in the law magazines. The action of the Federal court is readily explained by the fact that the case demanded application of the law of New Jersey which has not yet adopted the rule; furthermore, the rule as stated by the court, was inapplicable to the facts presented because no breach of warranty had been made out. On the other hand, the principles of the Baxter case have been enforced in many recent decisions, including Eisenbeiss...