Carey v. General Motors Corp.

• Decision Date: 04 April 1979
• Citation: 377 Mass. 736,387 N.E.2d 583
• Parties: Michael P. CAREY et al. v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 583

387 N.E.2d 583

377 Mass. 736

Michael P. CAREY et al. v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

Argued Feb. 7, 1979.

Decided April 4, 1979.

Patrick F. Brady, Boston (Charles F. Barrett, Boston, with him), for defendant.

Paul R. Sugarman, Boston (W. Thomas Smith, Boston, with him), for plaintiffs.

Before HENNESSEY, C. J., and QUIRICO, BRAUCHER, KAPLAN and WILKINS, JJ.

HENNESSEY, Chief Judge.

In this action of tort the plaintiffs allege that they incurred personal injuries in a motor vehicle accident on June 14, 1968, in South Hadley, Massachusetts, which was caused by the negligent design of an automobile. The plaintiffs are Michael P. Carey, who was the owner of the vehicle and the driver at the time of the accident, and George Langevin, who was a passenger in the vehicle. The case was originally commenced against the defendant General Motors Corporation (General Motors), the manufacturer of the 1968 Chevrolet Corvette which was the vehicle concerned, and against the dealer who sold the vehicle to the plaintiff Carey.

The case was tried before a jury in the Superior Court. At the close of the plaintiffs' evidence, the dealer's motion for a directed verdict was allowed by agreement of the parties. The jury returned verdicts for both plaintiffs against General Motors, and General Motors appealed. We granted the parties' applications for direct appellate review.

On June 14, 1968, sometime after 11:30 P.M., the plaintiffs left a party in progress at a home in South Hadley. Both had been drinking at the party, and Langevin was intoxicated. Carey then owned a 1968 Chevrolet Corvette automobile which he had purchased in December, 1967. On the date of the accident the vehicle had been driven in excess of 10,000 miles. Carey, with Langevin as his passenger, proceeded to drive his vehicle onto Woodbridge Street in South Hadley, and from there to the intersection of Woodbridge and Pearl Streets.

According to Carey's testimony, he had driven to a point about 500 feet from the intersection when he reached the crest of a hill on Woodbridge Street from where he could observe the intersection. He depressed the clutch and down-shifted the manual transmission of his vehicle from fourth to third gear, while at the same time giving the accelerator pedal "a quick little depression" in order to match the engine speed with the vehicle speed. Approximately 400 feet from the point of the accident, he realized that the accelerator pedal was stuck. He kicked at the side of the pedal several times to "get it back up again," and tried to "force it back up." Approximately twenty-five feet from the intersection, when the vehicle had accelerated to a speed of fifty to sixty miles an hour, he stepped on the brakes for the first time, but it was too late to stop the vehicle, which then collided with a tree. The impact was severe, causing the engine to be thrown twenty-five feet from the vehicle and the body of the vehicle to be demolished. Fires occurred at the engine and at the vehicle itself. Both plaintiffs were severely injured.

According to Carey, the stuck throttle condition experienced by him on the night of the accident had occurred on several previous occasions, sometimes while starting and other times while down-shifting.

The defendant alleges error in four respects: (1) The defendant's motions for directed verdicts, and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, were erroneously denied. (2) The trial judge erred in submitting the case to the jury under a charge which permitted them to find against the defendant without a finding of a specific, identifiable defect which caused the accident and which was attributable to the defendant. (3) The trial judge erred in admitting in evidence the March, 1969, recall letter by the defendant corporation pertaining to the vehicle model which was involved in the accident. (4) The trial judge erred in refusing to rule, as a matter of law, that should the jury award the plaintiff Langevin a sum to compensate him for future loss of earnings or earning capacity, no interest should be added to such sum; and in denying the defendant's motion, after verdict, to instruct the clerk not to assess interest on the $300,000 which the jury awarded Langevin for loss of future earning capacity. We conclude that there was no error, and we affirm the judgments for the plaintiffs.

1. There was no error in the denial of General Motors' motions for directed verdicts and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

The plaintiffs' case against General Motors rested largely on the testimony of a mechanical engineer, one Murray Burnstine. He advanced three theories as to the cause of the accident. The first theory involved a mechanical device on the Carey vehicle's carburetor known as the fast idle cam. Burnstine opined that one probable explanation of the accident was that this plastic cam cracked, separated, and broke into two pieces, and that one piece fell and lodged in a place where it prevented the throttles from closing when the driver removed his foot from the gas pedal. Burnstine's second theory concerned the "secondary lockout system" of the carburetor. It was his opinion that the design of this secondary system was such that it could malfunction and cause continued acceleration even after the driver released his foot from the accelerator pedal. The third theory advanced dealt with a back-up light wire, which passed from the engine compartment of the vehicle and was so routed that it could catch on a moving part of the accelerator control system and prevent the throttle from closing when the driver removed his foot from the gas pedal.

General Motors argues that Burnstine's testimony and all the evidence were so speculative as not to warrant submission of the case to the jury, particularly since there was no identification of any one of the three alleged design defects as the likely cause of the accident. We do not agree. It is true that where, in an automobile product liability case, the precise cause of the accident is left to conjecture, the defendant manufacturer is entitled to a directed verdict. Maher v. General Motors Corp., 370 Mass. 231, 234, 346 N.E.2d 833 (1976). Kennedy v. U-Haul Co., 360 Mass. 71, 73-74, 271 N.E.2d 346 (1971). Necktas v. General Motors Corp., 357 Mass. 546, 259 N.E.2d 234 (1970). However, the plaintiffs sustain their burden by a showing that there was greater likelihood or probability that the harm complained of was due to causes for which the defendant was responsible than from any other cause. McLaughlin v. Bernstein, 356 Mass. 219, 226, 249 N.E.2d 17 (1969). An expert's opinion based on facts in evidence is sufficient proof of causation. Black v. Boston Consol. Gas. Co., 325 Mass. 505, 91 N.E.2d 192 (1950). The plaintiffs are not required to eliminate entirely all possibility that the defendant's conduct was not a cause. It is enough that they introduce evidence from which reasonable men may conclude that it is more probable that the event was caused by the defendant than that it was not. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 433B, comment (b) (1965).

The evidence here was sufficient to meet the plaintiffs' burden. The expert Burnstine's testimony was that one of three negligently designed defects caused the accident. However, since each defect would cause the same occurrence in a similar way the expert could not say which of these took place at the time of the accident. Each, in the expert's opinion, was as probable as the other. Only one actually caused the accident but the expert testified that "surely it had to be one of them." Thus, any one of these conditions could be found to be a probable cause of the accident and all together reasonably excluded the likelihood of other causes. "There is no requirement of law that the plaintiff point out the exact way an accident happens. The plaintiff sustained her burden if she proved that there was greater likelihood or probability that the harm complained of was due to causes for which the defendant was responsible than from any other cause." McLaughlin v. Bernstein, 356 Mass. 219, 226, 249 N.E.2d 17, 22 (1969). Beaver v. Costin, 352 Mass. 624, 627, 227 N.E.2d 344 (1967). Thus, we do not agree with the argument of General Motors that the plaintiffs must somehow identify which of the three defects caused the accident even though the evidence showed that, as to each, General Motors was negligent and that "surely it had to be one of them" that caused the accident.

General Motors also argues that Burnstine's expert opinions should have been ignored because there was not adequate evidentiary support for any of them. Again, we do not agree. It is true that expert testimony on the issue of causation does not help when it rests on speculation alone. Swartz v. General Motors Corp., --- Mass. ---, --- ^A, 378 N.E.2d 61 (1978). Furthermore, an opinion given by an expert will be disregarded where it amounts to no more than mere speculation or a guess from subordinate facts that do not give adequate support to the conclusion reached. Sevigny's Case, 337 Mass. 747, 751, 151 N.E.2d 258 (1958). Nass v. Duxbury, 327 Mass. 396, 99 N.E.2d 54 (1951). However, those principles do not invalidate the expert's opinions here, because the jury could properly find that the facts supported all three of Burnstine's "theories." ¹

Pursuing its argument as to inadequate evidence, General Motors asserts that Burnstine's opinions were speculative and conjectural because they were inconsistent with the evidence in the case, particularly the facts as related by Carey. For example, the company argues that Burnstine's statement that either the fast idle cam or the secondary lockout system caused the accident was not consistent with the accident facts as related by Carey. This argument is in turn premised on evidence that shows that, if either of these deficiencies caused the acceleration just before...