Caprara v. Chrysler Corp.

• Decision Date: 20 January 1981
• Citation: 436 N.Y.S.2d 251,52 N.Y.2d 114,417 N.E.2d 545
• Parties: , 417 N.E.2d 545 Fausto CAPRARA, Respondent, v. CHRYSLER CORPORATION et al., Appellants, et al., Defendants.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

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436 N.Y.S.2d 251 52 N.Y.2d 114, 417 N.E.2d 545 Fausto CAPRARA, Respondent,
v.
CHRYSLER CORPORATION et al., Appellants, et al., Defendants. Court of Appeals of New York. Jan. 20, 1981.

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Sheila L. Birnbaum and William R. Meagher, New York City, for appellants.

Robert M. Cohen, Troy, E. Stewart Jones, Sr. and Alfred C. Purello, Albany, for respondent.

OPINION OF THE COURT

FUCHSBERG, Judge.

Central to the issues on this appeal is the admissibility of proof of a postaccident design change in support of a products liability cause of action submitted to a jury on an alleged manufacturing defect.

The plaintiff, Fausto Caprara, received a verdict on each of two causes of action, one in negligence and the other in strict products liability, against Chrysler Corporation and Chrysler Motors Corporation (Chrysler), which designed, manufactured and marketed a Dodge Coronet automobile Caprara was operating at the time of the occurrence which gave rise to this case. The Appellate Division, 71 A.D.2d 515, 423 N.Y.S.2d 694, having since affirmed on the facts and the law, though the facts were vigorously contested in the first instance, they must now be taken most favorably to the successful plaintiff (Matter of Kornblum Metals Co. v. Instel Corp., 38 N.Y.2d 376, 379, 379 N.Y.S.2d 826, 342 N.E.2d 591; CPLR 5501, subd. (b)). ¹ Chrysler does not dispute that plaintiff made out a prima facie case.

On that basis, we note that, according to Caprara, he was driving the vehicle into a familiar downhill curve on Congress Street in the City of Troy at 25 to 30 miles per hour when, as he attempted to turn his steering wheel to navigate the turn, "the wheel seized right up", causing the car to swerve out of control and crash with consequential injuries which include quadreplegia. An experienced driver, whose familiarity with automobiles was heightened by employment in an automobile shop, plaintiff also testified that the steering mechanism had never been altered from the condition it was in when the car was sold by the defendants a year earlier and that, in the intervening time, it had functioned uneventfully.

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The parties also produced an avalanche of experts. Of particular pertinence to this appeal is the testimony of plaintiff's witness William G. Burrill, an engineer specializing in automobile failure analysis, who, with the assistance of an auto mechanic, had examined the untampered wreck at the shop to which it had been taken after the crash. Burrill and the mechanic implicated a defective lower front ball joint, which helps carry the weight of the car, as the cause of the accident. They found all other parts which could have contributed to the mechanical failure experienced by the plaintiff in good condition.

Specifically, these witnesses established that, though the automobile had only traveled some 9,000 rather than the 80,000 to 150,000 miles the ball joint concededly was intended to last, by actual measurement, it displayed an amount of wear so excessive that it had reached the replacement point and no longer met the State's official motor vehicle test requirements. Moreover, they went on to explain that, in this condition, it was possible, especially at a time when a downhill shifting of weight and a left hand turn would combine to put stress on the right front, for the joint to move into a chance position in which it could suddenly produce precisely the kind of binding effect Caprara described.

Also figuring on this appeal is the testimony of Daniel W. Doran, supervisor of Chrysler's steering and suspension department, whom plaintiff also elected to call. In the course of his examination, it was developed, over Chrysler's objection, that, nearly four years after the plaintiff's accident, the appellants had modified the design of the joint by adding a plastic insert which eliminated the play which could wear down the ball. Doran further admitted that, for about eight years prior to the Caprara accident, he and Chrysler knew that General Motors had already introduced a substantially similar design change. ² Although Doran agreed that the movement which the plastic removed could have resulted in wearing, he insisted that the modification was functionally irrelevant and had been adopted solely to discourage unscrupulous mechanics from inducing motorists to replace ball joints prematurely. ³ Returning to the stand, Burrill countered that the design change would serve to alleviate the excessive attrition to which he earlier had attributed the accident-producing malfunction. At this juncture, of course, the plaintiff's case, as Chrysler concedes, took on aspects compatible with both manufacturing and design defect theories, each a recognized element on which a strict products liability case may be grounded (Robinson v. Reed-Prentice Div. of Package Mach. Co., 49 N.Y.2d 471, 478, 426 N.Y.S.2d 717, 403 N.E.2d 440).

Yet, in sending the case to the jury, the trial court decided, sua sponte and with the concurrence of Chrysler, to submit the products liability case solely on a theory of defective "manufacture and assembly". As it had on an implied warranty count, it expressly ruled out submission of the design theory as such, apparently in the interest of simplifying the case. Nevertheless, under circumstances hereinafter detailed, the Trial Judge denied defendants' motion to strike Burrill's testimony on the effect that the Chrysler design change would have had on the ball joint's durability. As to the

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proof supplied through Doran on the subsequent change in ball joint design, at the request of Chrysler and without exception, in its charge the court advised the jury as follows: "I instruct you that this evidence alone and by itself does not establish that the ball joints in the plaintiff's car were defective. The fact that there are one or more different designs or that there is a design change to a given product does not establish that there is any defect in any particular design, and I so charge you as a matter of law."

In addition, the court submitted plaintiff's conceptually unrelated negligence cause of action.

This as background, we now turn to the two contentions on which Chrysler, in the main, posits its quest for a new trial. One is that it was reversible error to admit the evidence of a postoccurrence change in the ball joint design altogether. The second arises from the Trial Judge's failure to instruct the jury to disregard the Burrill testimony on that subject. We believe both are without merit.

Since the Burrill testimony touches on both points, we treat first with the defendants' request that the jury be told to disregard what this witness had had to say on the difference the plastic insert would have made to the functioning of the accident-producing ball joint. The procedural genesis for this argument, an attack on the witness' qualifications as an expert, took the form of a motion to strike, solely on appellant's assertion "that Mr. Burrill acknowledged the fact that he was not an expert with regard to design of ball joints". This characterization, presumably made from memory some three weeks after Burrill had testified, went too far. A more studied reading of Burrill's testimony reveals that the witness never suggested that he did not have a professional understanding of ball joints. In substance, he merely agreed that he was not a designer of and had never participated in constructing one.

This limitation on his background did not necessarily disqualify the witness from testifying on the mechanics and merits of ball joints. As part of his engineering and automobile accident reconstruction background, Burrill, who had supplemented his under graduate degree in mechanical engineering by completing graduate studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, had served as consultant to almost every major American automotive manufacturer. ⁴ In addition, even gainsaying the formal training he enjoyed, his practical experience included actual disassembling and analysis of some 100 ball joints. As may be true, for example, of a knowledgeable music critic who has never written a note, Burrill's competency could just as well have derived from the real world of everyday use as from that of the laboratory. As the court said in Meiselman v. Crown Hgts. Hosp., 285 N.Y. 389, 398, 34 N.E.2d 367, "(l)ong observation and actual experience, though without actual study (may) qualify a witness as an expert" (see, also, Delair v. Gaudet, 4 A.D.2d 736, 737, 163 N.Y.S.2d 415 (engineer qualified by education and experience to give expert testimony on the adequacy of the installation of a heating plant, despite having never installed one)). Accordingly, it was well within the province of the trial court, the one entrusted with the primary responsibility to pass on an expert's qualification, to have found him qualified.

Indeed, we know the court initially found him so, for it denied the motion to strike. Only when it was renewed as part of a long series of in-chambers requests to charge, made as the case was drawing to a close, did the court indicate that it would grant the motion, and then only to the extent of striking out Burrill's testimony on design. Then, demurring to a demand that it advise the jury of its ruling, the court stated, instead, that it would handle the matter in its charge. In fact, it never did so. For its

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part, the Appellate Division opined on review that it would have been an abuse of discretion to have granted the motion. As we see it, contextually, the failure to advise the jury to disregard the testimony in question may be construed as an ultimate de facto decision not to do so. On that premise, we conclude that it was not error for the trial court to have rested on the ruling it announced in its original disposition of the motion.

Now reaching the broader and more basic question of the role of postaccident change in this case, we start by reiterating the long...