Blankenship v. General Motors Corp., 19949

• Decision Date: 27 June 1991
• Docket Number: No. 19949,19949
• Citation: 185 W.Va. 350,406 S.E.2d 781
• Court: West Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: , 60 USLW 2176 Yvette BLANKENSHIP v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.

Page 781

406 S.E.2d 781

185 W.Va. 350, 60 USLW 2176

Yvette BLANKENSHIP v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.

No. 19949.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Submitted May 7, 1991.

Decided June 27, 1991.

Syllabus by the Court

1. A complaint against the seller of a motor vehicle states a cause of action under West Virginia law if the complaint does not allege that a vehicle defect caused a collision, but alleges only that the injuries sustained by the occupant as a result of the collision were enhanced by a design defect in the vehicle.

2. In West Virginia, to recover on a theory of crashworthiness against the manufacturer of a motor vehicle, it is necessary only to show that a defect in the vehicle's design was a factor in causing some aspect of the plaintiff's harm. Once the plaintiff has made this prima facie showing, the manufacturer can then limit its liability if it can show that the plaintiff's injuries are capable of apportionment between the first and second collisions; therefore, the burden is upon the manufacturer to make the allocation.

3. In the litigation of vehicle crashworthiness cases under theories of product liability, whenever there is a split of authority in other jurisdictions on an issue about which this court has not yet spoken, the trial court should presume that we would adopt the rule most favorable to the plaintiff.

Paul C. Sullivan, Sullivan & Sullivan, Cumberland, Md., Staggers & Webb, Keyser, for plaintiff.

G.W. Lavender III, Meyer, Darragh, Buckler, Bebenek, Eck & Hall, Charleston, for amicus Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc.

Edward W. Rugeley, Jr., Gale R. Lea, Jackson & Kelly, Charleston, Joseph G. Finnerty, Jr., Michael S. Barranco, Piper & Marbury, Baltimore, Md., for defendant.

NEELY, Justice:

In this case the United States District Court for the District of Maryland has certified the following question to us:

Does a complaint against the seller of a motor vehicle state a cause of action under West Virginia law if the complaint does not allege that a vehicle defect caused a collision, but does allege that the injuries sustained by the occupant as a result of the collision were enhanced by a design defect in the vehicle?

We answer the certified question in the affirmative, and like all of our sister states, we now explicitly adopt the "crashworthiness doctrine." ¹

There is an embarrassment of riches in reported cases and law review articles on the subject of crashworthiness. A collection of the cases and a summary of the scholarly literature can be found in B. Levenstram and D.J. Lapp, Plaintiff's Burden of Proving Enhanced Injury in Crashworthiness Cases: A Clash Worthy of Analysis, 38 DePaul Law Review 55 (1989). According to Mr. Levenstram and Mr. Lapp, as of the publication of their article, there were but two jurisdictions in the United States that still failed to recognize the doctrine of crashworthiness, namely Mississippi and West Virginia. As it turns out, however, the old Mississippi case of Walton v. Chrysler Motor Corp., 229 So.2d 568 (Miss.1969), and cases based on Walton, were overruled in 1985 by Toliver v. General Motors Corp., 482 So.2d 213 (Miss.1985). That has left in doubt, then, only West Virginia, and that doubt is based upon the federal case of McClung v. Ford Motor Co., 333 F.Supp. 17 (1971), aff'd, 472 F.2d 240 (4th Cir.1973), decided immediately before this Court's wholesale updating of our tort law in the 1970's.

Obviously, West Virginia's personal injury law has moved light years away from the doctrines applied in McClung, supra, as evidenced by cases like Dawson v. Canteen Corp., 158 W.Va. 516, 212 S.E.2d 82 (1975) (abolishing the requirement of privity in warranty actions), Morningstar v. Black & Decker Mfg., 162 W.Va. 857, 253 S.E.2d 666 (1979) (developing a product liability rule permitting recovery where a defective product causes personal injury), and Bradley v. Appalachian Power, 163 W.Va. 332, 256 S.E.2d 879 (1979) (abolishing contributory negligence as an absolute bar to recovery in tort). Thus, it is astounding that the issue before us today did not arrive sooner.

In the excellent briefs of General Motors and amicus, Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc., numerous issues concerning the wisdom of applying product liability law to vehicle crashworthiness problems have been raised. For example, both the defendant and amicus point out that because, under Wright v. Hanley, 182 W.Va. 334, 387 S.E.2d 801 (1989), a car's occupants' failure to use available seat belts cannot be introduced as contributory negligence in West Virginia, it would be unfair to allow an action for crashworthiness or "second collision." General Motors argues:

It would be quite ironic if this court were to refuse to impose upon the passenger the duty to minimize his injuries in a collision by wearing his seat belt but, nevertheless, to impose upon the manufacturer the duty to minimize the passenger's injuries through the adoption of the crashworthiness theory of liability.

Defendant's brief, pp. 20-21. However, we did not hold in Hanley that failure to use an available seat belt would not be comparative contributory negligence in a crashworthiness case.

And, in a similar vein, both the defendant and amicus argue that allowing crashworthiness lawsuits invites juries to second-guess the safety standards promulgated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. ² Thus, under the common theories of crashworthiness, defendant and amicus argue, different juries will reach different conclusions about the "reasonableness" of safety features, leaving manufacturers in the unenviable position of being unable to predict what juries will deem a "defective product [that] causes personal injury." Morningstar, supra. Furthermore, defendant and amicus argue, juries may find designs approved by federal regulators "defective," giving the whole regulatory effort a certain Alice in Wonderland quality.

In all of these regards the manufacturers and amicus have strong arguments. Nonetheless, West Virginia is a small rural state with .66 percent of the population of the United States. Although some members of this Court have reservations about the wisdom of many aspects of tort law, ³ as a court we are utterly powerless to make the overall tort system for cases arising in interstate commerce more rational: Nothing that we do will have any impact whatsoever on the set of economic trade-offs that occur in the national economy. And, ironically, trying unilaterally to make the American tort system more rational through being uniquely responsible in West Virginia will only punish our residents severely without, in any regard, improving the system for anyone else. ⁴

When the Supreme Court of Mississippi--the next to last state court to adopt the "crashworthiness" doctrine--overruled the Walton case, supra, (which had denied a cause of action in Mississippi for lack of crashworthiness), the Mississippi court summarized their reasons for adopting the crashworthiness doctrine as follows:

The rationale for the imposition of this absolute liability is two-fold: to shift the cost of injuries from the public to the manufacturer, Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc., 59 Cal.2d 57, 63, 27 Cal.Rptr. 697, 701, 377 P.2d 897, 901 (1962); and to assist the plaintiff in establishing what would otherwise be a near-impossible burden of proof. J.W. Wade, On the Nature of Strict Tort Liability for Products, 44 Miss.L.J. 825, 826 (1973). The first part of the rationale represents a policy decision. As Justice Traynor stated in Greenman:

"The purpose of such liability is to insure that the costs of injuries resulting from defective products are borne by the manufacturers that put such products on the market rather than by the injured persons who are powerless to protect themselves." 59 Cal. at 63, 27 Cal.Rptr. at 701, 377 P.2d at 901. The second part of the rationale assists the plaintiff who could not, otherwise, satisfy his burden of showing how the product became defective. As Dean Wade has noted:

It is often difficult, or even impossible to prove negligence on the part of the manufacturer or supplier. True, res ipsa loquitur often comes to the aid of the injured party. But it is normally regarded as a form of circumstantial evidence, and this means that there must be a logical inference of negligence which is sufficiently strong to let the case go to the jury. This is often not present, and strict liability eliminates the need of proof. Wade, Strict Tort Liability, supra.

Toliver v. General Motors, supra, at 216.

What is obvious from the Mississippi court's discussion is that product liability is concerned with spreading the cost of inevitable accidents ⁵. Inherent in this cost-spreading function is the collection of what amounts to insurance premiums from all the purchasers of products, and the purchase by manufacturers of commercial insurance or the creation of self insurance funds.

The defendant before us, General Motors, is the largest producer of automobiles in the world. In light of the fact that all of our sister states have adopted a cause of action for lack of crashworthiness, General Motors is already collecting a product liability premium every time it sells a car anywhere in the world, including West Virginia. See "Product Liability: The Corporate Response," op. cit. supra note 4. West Virginians, then, are already paying the product liability insurance premium when they buy a General Motors car, so this Court would be both foolish and irresponsible if we held that while West Virginians must pay the premiums, West Virginians can't collect the insurance after they're injured. ⁶

Already as early as Dawson v. Canteen Corp., 158 W.Va. 516, 212 S.E.2d 82 (1975) we recognized the peculiarly American system of fifty uncoordinated, separate schemes of tort law coexisting within one industrial nation. Thus, in abolishing West Virginia's rule requiring privity of...