Baumgardner v. American Motors Corp.

• Decision Date: 23 May 1974
• Docket Number: No. 42985,42985
• Citation: 83 Wn.2d 751,522 P.2d 829
• Parties: Kenneth BAUMGARDNER, Individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Catherine Baumgardner Deceased, and as Guardian for Sandra Baumgardner and Cheryl Baumgardner Appellant, v. AMERICAN MOTORS CORPORATION et al., Respondents.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

Page 751

83 Wn.2d 751

522 P.2d 829

Kenneth BAUMGARDNER, Individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Catherine Baumgardner Deceased, and as Guardian for Sandra Baumgardner and Cheryl Baumgardner Appellant, v. AMERICAN MOTORS CORPORATION et al., Respondents.

No. 42985.

Supreme Court of Washington, En Banc.

May 23, 1974.

Peters & Tracy, R. L. Peters, Tacoma, Daniel F. Sullivan & Associates, Daniel F. Sullivan, Seattle, for appellant.

Combs & Kucklick, Harold E. Winther, Tacoma, for respondents.

BRACHTENBACH, Associate Justice.

Here we meet for the first time the question of whether the manufacturer of an automobile involved in a collision is liable for injuries caused or enhanced because of a defect in design or manufacture, even though the defect did not cause or contribute to the collision itself. The issue has been characterized as that of the 'enhanced injury' or 'second accident'.

Plaintiff husband, individually and in his representative capacity for his deceased wife's estate, sued the defendant manufacturer, American Motors Corporation, and also the owner and the driver of the car which collided with plaintiff's vehicle. It was alleged that the individual defendants' car negligently collided with plaintiff's automobile. Plaintiff husband was driving, without a seatbelt, while his wife was seated in the front passenger side, wearing a seatbelt but not a shoulder harness. Plaintiff alleges that at the time of the collision the front seat, due to a defect, broke loose and was propelled forward. At the same time the seatbelt remained firmly attached to the floor, thereby crushing the wife between the belt and the seat. An additional defect is claimed in that after the collision the seatbelt buckle would not release, thereby continuing the pressure on the wife's abdomen until the belt could be cut some minutes later. Plaintiff alleges that his wife's injuries and death were either caused or enhanced by these defects. Plaintiff husband also sought damages for his own personal injuries.

The trial court granted defendant manufacturer's motion for summary judgment as to plaintiff's theories of strict liability, implied and express warranties, res ipsa loquitur, gross negligence, willful and wanton misconduct and outrageous conduct. Apparently in order to have the underlying issue resolved on appeal, plaintiff declined to proceed on his remaining theory of negligence which the trial court was willing to leave in the case.

The trial court, during three hearings, gave counsel ample opportunity to present a suitable and clear order. Unfortunately some confusion in the record persists. The summary judgment order dismisses American Motors with prejudice, but grants it an offset for any amounts recovered from the individual defendants as against any judgment recovered against American Motors. It is not clear what American Motors' attorney was trying to accomplish in the order which he prepared because obviously the issue of offset was moot when American Motors was dismissed. The plaintiff assigns error to the dismissal of his negligence claim with prejudice. The procedural process by which that issue was dismissed is not clear. However, we shall deal with these and other procedural problems in our order of disposition.

The facts alleged by plaintiff create a typical case of enhanced injury in that the asserted defects in the seat and the seatbelt buckle in no manner caused or contributed to the original collision, but are contended to have enhanced the injuries received by the occupants.

Similar litigation in other jurisdictions has led to a clear division of rationale and result. various reasons are advanced as the basis for the decisions which deny recovery for such enhanced injury. We will evaluate these arguments in more detail, but they may be summarized as follows: (1) a manufacturer has no duty to produce an accident proof or foolproof product; (2) a manufacturer is not an insurer of the safety of the users of his product; (3) a manufacturer need not incorporate every safety device and design in his product; (4) a manufacturer only owes a duty to make his product safe for its intended use and the intended use of an automobile does not include collision with other vehicles; and (5) imposition of design standards is a legislative, not a judicial function.

The leading case rejecting recovery is Evans v. General Motors Corp., 359 F.2d 822 (7th Cir. 1966), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 836, 87 S.Ct. 83, 17 L.Ed.2d 70 (1966). It relied on all points summarized above except No. 4. The dissent in Evans found these reasons unpersuasive and concluded simply that

General Motors' duty was to use such care in designing its automobiles that reasonable protection is given purchasers against death and injury from accidents which are expected and foreseeable yet unavoidable by the purchaser despite careful use.

Evans v. General Motors Corp., Supra at 827.

The Evans case has been criticized extensively. Nader and Page, Automobile Design and the Judicial Process, 55 Cal.L.Rev. 645 (1967) and articles cited therein at page 647 n. 69. Nonetheless, Evans has been followed in a number of cases including: Willis v. Chrysler Corp., 264 F.Supp. 1010 (S.D.Tex.1967); Shumard v. General Motors Corp., 270 F.Supp. 311 (S.D.Ohio 1967); Schemel v. General Motors Corp., 384 F.2d 802 (7th Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 945, 88 S.Ct. 1030, 19 L.Ed.2d 1134 (1968); Walton v. Chrysler Motor Corp., 229 So.2d 568 (Miss.1970); McClung v. Ford Motor Co., 333 F.Supp. 17 (S.D.W.Va.1971), aff'd per curiam, 472 F.2d 240 (4th Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 412 U.S. 940, 93 S.Ct. 2779, 37 L.Ed.2d 400 (1973); Burkhard v. Short, 28 Ohio App.2d 141, 275 N.E.2d 632 (1971).

At the same time an opposite set of theories was developing, led by Larsen v. General Motors Corp., 391 F.2d 495 (8th Cir. 1968). That court persuasively reasoned:

Automobiles are made for use on the roads and highways in transporting persons and cargo to and from various points. This intended use cannot be carried out without encountering in varying degrees the statistically proved hazard of injury-producing impacts of various types. The manufacturer should not be heard to say that it does not intend its product to be involved in any accident when it can easily foresee and when it knows that the probability over the life of its product is high, that it will be involved in some type of injury-producing accident . . .

. . . Where the manufacturer's negligence in design causes an unreasonable risk to be imposed upon the user of its products, the manufacturer should be liable for the injury caused by its failure to exercise reasonable care in the design. These injuries are readily foreseeable as an incident to the normal and expected use of an automobile. While automobile are not made for the purpose of colliding with each other, a frequent and inevitable contingency of normal automobile use will result in collisions and injury-producing impacts. No rational basis exists for limiting recovery to situations where the defect in design or manufacture was the causative factor of the accident, as the accident and the resulting injury, usually caused by the so-called 'second collision' of the passenger with the interior part of the automobile, all are foreseeable.

Larsen v. General Motors Corp., Supra at 501--502.

Larsen's progeny is numerous. In Dyson v. General Motors Corp., 298 F.Supp. 1064, 1072 (E.D.P.1969), the court held:

The correct rule, in my opinion, can be stated either of two ways: (1) vehicular accidents are so commomplace as to constitute a readily foreseeable misuse of motor vehicles; or (2) vehicular accidents are incidental to the normal and intended use of motor vehicles on today's highways.

The court in Mickle v. Blackmon, 252 S.C. 202, 230, 166 S.E.2d 173, 185 (1969), stated:

(A)n automobile manufacturer knows with certainty that many users of his product will be involved in collisions, and that the incidence and extent of injury to them will frequently be determined by the placement, design and construction of such interior components as shafts, levers, knobs, handles and others. By ordinary negligence standards, a known risk of harm raises a duty of commensurate care.

Finally, in Grundmanis v. British Motor Corp., 308 F.Supp. 303, 306 (E.D.Wis.1970), the court observed:

To adopt the position of the majority in Evans, supra (Evans v. General Motors Corp., 359 F.2d 822 (7th Cir. 1966)), would be to ignore reality, for the foreseeability of accidents is a matter of public and common knowledge. Thus, the manufacturer must accept the duty of protecting the user from unreasonable risk of injury due to negligence in design.

(Footnote omitted.) See Passwaters v. General Motors Corp., 454 F.2d 1270 (8th Cir. 1972); Friend v. General Motors Corp., 118 Ga.App. 763, 165 S.E.2d 734 (1968); Brandenburger v. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., 513 P.2d 268 (Mont.1973); Engberg v. Ford Motor Co., 205 N.W.2d 104 (S.D.1973); Ellithorpe v. Ford Motor Co., 503 S.W.2d 516 (Tenn.1973); Horn v. General Motors Corp., 34 Cal.App.3d 773, 110 Cal.Rptr. 410 (1973).

In summary, we agree with the conclusion of the New York Court of Appeals in Bolm v. Triumph Corp., 33 N.Y.2d 151, 159, 350 N.Y.S.2d 644, 650, 305 N.E.2d 769, 773 (1973):

Neither sound policy nor reason can be found to justify a distinction between the liability of the manufacturer whose defective item causes the initial accident and that of the manufacturer whose defective product aggravates or enhances the injuries after an intervening impact.

We find the rationale of the Evans line of cases to be faulty to the point of being specious. The reasons advanced do not get to the core of the problem. Examining the first three premises summarized above, we find that recovery is denied because a manufacturer is not expected to produce an accident free product, it is not an insurer of the users of its product and it need not...