Ford Motor Co. v. Wagoner

• Decision Date: 02 March 1946
• Citation: 192 S.W.2d 840
• Parties: FORD MOTOR CO. et al. v. WAGONER.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

192 S.W.2d 840

FORD MOTOR CO. et al. v. WAGONER.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

March 2, 1946.

Rehearing Denied May 4, 1946.

Error to Circuit Court, Davidson County; Weldon B. White, Judge.

Action by Colleen Langley Wagoner against the Ford Motor Company and another to recover damages for personal injuries. Judgment for defendants was reversed by the Court of Appeals, and defendants bring certiorari.

Judgment of the Court of Appeals reversed.

Jay G. Stephenson and J. G. Lackey, both of Nashville, for plaintiff.

Armistead, Waller, Davis & Lansden and Hume, Howard, Davis & Gale, all of Nashville, for defendants.

CHAMBLISS, Justice.

This is an action to recover for personal injuries suffered by the driver of a Ford automobile, brought against the manufacturer and its local agency, charging that the proximate cause of the accident was a defect in the catch intended to hold in position the hood of the car, as the result of which defect the hood came loose and sprang up and so obscured the vision of the driver that she lost control of the car. In one count, it was alleged that the manufacturer knew, or should have known, of this defect and was, therefore, negligent in the manufacture and putting of the car out for sale to the public. In another count, it was alleged that the defendant manufacturer knew of the defect and was, therefore, in effect, guilty of fraud.

At the close of the proof the trial judge sustained a motion by the Volunteer Company, the "local agency," for peremptory instructions. While he overruled this motion by the Ford Company, in submitting the case to the jury he withdrew from their consideration the first count. The jury found for the defendants. The court of appeals reversed and remanded for a trial by jury of the issue of negligence under the first count. We granted certiorari.

Upon the trial the proof showed that, shortly after this model was put upon the market, the attention of the defendant Ford Company was called to the fact that when cars of this model were subjected to a severe jar or jolt, and the catch provided was not securely fastened, the hood, coming loose, might rise on its springs and obstruct the vision of the driver. Ford thereupon at once provided and distributed to all dealers an auxiliary catch, with instructions to install these catches on all cars of that model without charge, as a precaution. It appears that these catches and instructions were sent to the Nashville agencies.

The car here involved was first sold to one Nashville agency and by that agency to another, the defendant Volunteer Motor Company. The Volunteer Company sold the car to one of its then salesmen, Holly Norman, who used it as a demonstrator. After owning and using the car for several months and driving it some 10,000 miles, and after severing his connection with Volunteer Company, so that his relationship as agent of the defendants no longer existed, Norman sold it to a Nashville resident, R. B. Baxendale. It was while Norman owned the car that these safety catches were received by the Volunteer Company, of which Norman was an employee, and he was informed about it and one was tendered to him, which he declined because he did not regard it necessary.

The accident occurred some time later, after the car had been driven by Baxendale a distance which is not shown, when he and a party of five friends were returning after midnight from Columbia, Tennessee, where they had gone to attend a dance, the car at that time being driven by the plaintiff in this case, a lady guest of Baxendale, who testified that while meeting and passing a truck, moving, as was the car, at a speed of fifty miles an hour, the hood became loose, rose up and obscured her vision, that one of the passengers leaned forward from the rear seat and seized the wheel and the car went off the road, was wrecked and plaintiff injured.

The court of appeals held that the trial judge was in error in taking the first count, which charged simple negligence, from the consideration of the jury; that there was some material evidence of negligence of the manufacturer which presented a jury question, and the court being of opinion that the rule of actionable liability of a manufacturer of medicines, foods and beverages to a third party, announced in Boyd v. Coca Cola Bottling Works, 132 Tenn. 23, 177 S.W. 80, recently approved in Coca Cola Bottling Works v. Sullivan, 178 Tenn. 405, 158 S.W.2d 721, was applicable to manufacturers of automobiles. This interesting question is dealt with in the opinion with that care and research which is characteristic of the learned writer.

Without discussion of the correctness of this extension to automobiles of the rule allowing recovery against manufacturers by subsequent purchasers, petitioners here rely chiefly upon the defense that the causal connection was broken when the provision made by the defendant to cure the alleged defect subsequent to the original manufacturer of the machines, as above described, was rejected by Norman, into whose ownership and control it had passed, and that the independent intervening act of Norman in failing and refusing to attach and make use of the auxiliary, or supplemental safety catch when offered to him and neglecting to advise his vendee was the proximate cause of the accident.

As before stated, the Ford Company had sent these safety catches to its Nashville agencies, with the positive instructions above recited, and the proof is that one of them was tendered to Norman while he was the owner and user of this car, but that, in the exercise of his own judgment that such an appliance was unnecessary, based on his experience with the car, he refused to make use of it and thereafter sold the car to Baxendale.

Conceding, as held by the court of appeals, the continuing liability of a manufacturer of automobiles to successive purchasers for damages resulting from defects chargeable to negligence of the manufacturer, and conceding, but not deciding, that there is material evidence in the instant case of such negligence, and, also, that this defect was the cause of this accident, and that the plaintiff is free from contributory negligence, all of which are controverted issues, we consider this question which, if answered in the affirmative, is determinative of this case: Does the evidence establish that Norman, the intermediary vendor, was put upon such notice of the alleged defect and the offer by the defendant manufacturer of an adequate protective remedy, which he rejected, as to bring into play the rule which fastens the charge of conscious intervening negligence upon an intermediate vendor and relieves the manufacturer of liability? What is this rule of law?

In Beven on Negligence, a leading text book on this subject, recognized as a classic, in the chapter dealing with "Limits of Liability" (Volume I, Fourth Ed., pp. 42, 44), and discussing legal obligation to successive vendees of a compounder of drugs, or manufacturer of articles, for sale to the public, dangerous to health, or in their use otherwise, thus lays down a generally recognized limitation upon liability saying (p. 42): "A person who knowing the perilous character of a compound [equally applicable, clearly, to other instrumentalities fraught with danger] which he has bought, yet hands on the compound to a third person, destroys, by his negligent act, the causal connection between the first person concerned and the ultimate injury sustained." (Italics inserted.)

And, again, on p. 44, it is said:

"The principle that to fix liability for injuries brought about through a complicated state of facts, the last conscious agency must be sought; and the consideration that if, between the agency setting at work the mischief and the actual mischief done, there intervenes a conscious agency, which might or should have averted mischief, the original wrongdoer ceases to be liable, afford the clues for the unravelling the cases."

The principle which governs and limits liability in the instant case could hardly be more clearly stated than in the foregoing paragraphs. Norman plainly became, under the proof, an intervening "conscious agency, which might or should have averted mischief," and, therefore, the alleged "original wrongdoer ceased to be liable." He "destroyed by his negligent act" of omission "the causal connection between the first person concerned [here Ford Company] and the ultimate injury sustained."

The rule thus stated is so obviously well founded in principle and reason that it is not necessary to lengthen this opinion by extended references...