Haas v. United Technologies Corp.

• Decision Date: 21 June 1982
• Citation: 450 A.2d 1173
• Parties: Lillian M. HAAS, et al., Plaintiffs Below, Appellants, v. UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, a Delaware Corporation, Defendant Below, Appellee. . Submitted on Reargument Before the Court En Banc:
• Court: Supreme Court of Delaware

Page 1173

450 A.2d 1173

Lillian M. HAAS, et al., Plaintiffs Below, Appellants, v. UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, a Delaware Corporation,

Defendant Below, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted on Reargument Before the

Court En Banc: June 21, 1982.

Decided: Aug. 25, 1982. ^*

Upon appeal and cross-appeal from Superior Court. Affirmed.

Arthur Inden, Ben T. Castle (argued), Craig A. Karsnitz and Barry M. Willoughby, of Young, Conaway, Stargatt & Taylor, Wilmington, and Francis A. Ferrara of Kassab, Cherry, Curran & Archbold, Media, Pa., for plaintiffs below, appellants.

Edmund N. Carpenter, II (argued), Allen M. Terrell and Helen L. Winslow, of Richards, Layton & Finger, Wilmington, for defendant below, appellee.

Before McNEILLY, QUILLEN, HORSEY and MOORE, Justices, constituting the Court En Banc.

McNEILLY, Justice.

In this product liability case, we consider an appeal and cross appeal ¹ from a jury verdict and judgment adverse to plaintiffs in the Superior Court. Two principal issues are presented for our review: (1) Did the Trial Judge, in his instructions to the jury, improperly preclude the jury from determining whether a helicopter manufactured by the defendant was defective for failure of its design to incorporate an in-cockpit instrument which could warn a pilot, while in flight, that a helicopter rotary blade was losing pressure and in danger of cracking and (2) Was the application of the Special Jury statute a violation of 10 Del.C. §§ 4501 and 4503 and the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Federal and State Constitutions? We affirm.

I

This case, as with many products liability cases, has its origins in tragedy. On January 8, 1975, while enroute from New River, North Carolina to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, a CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter, manufactured by defendant's Sikorsky division, crashed near Salisbury, Maryland killing all five servicemen on board. Four of the men were Marine Corps crewmen. ² The fifth serviceman was a member of the Air Force who was hitching a ride to the air base. Plaintiffs are the surviving spouses, children and personal representatives of the decedents. The parties agree that the helicopter crashed when one of its six rotors fractured in flight.

A.

Before we focus on the issues, some background information about defendant's aircraft is needed. The rotors on the Sea Stallion helicopter were hollow and were pressurized with nitrogen. If a crack developed in one of the rotor blades, or spars, the nitrogen would seep out leaving the spar depressurized. Of course, a loss in blade pressure while the aircraft was flying could be, and in this unfortunate case was, symptomatic of a crack, thus resulting in a crash and loss of life.

To forestall such occurrences, Sikorsky equipped the CH-53D helicopter with a safety device called a "BIM"--short for "Blade Inspection Method." The BIM utilized a gauge located at the base of each spar. If the rotor was fully pressurized, the gauge registered white; if the rotor was not fully pressurized, the gauge registered black. The gauge could only be inspected when the helicopter was on the ground with its blades stationary. Operation of the helicopter normally included a pre-flight check of all gauges. No inspection of the gauges was possible while the aircraft was airborne. The helicopter was not equipped with an in-cockpit warning device that would signal a blade crack while the helicopter was in flight.

B.

The parties agree that since the deaths of the servicemen occurred in Maryland, the law of that State is controlling. See Maryland Wrongful Death Act, Md.Code Ann., Cts & Jud. Proc. § 3-901 et seq. (1980). In Phipps v. General Motors Corp., 278 Md. 337, 363 A.2d 955 (1976), Maryland's highest Court adopted Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402 A (1965) and its rationale of strict liability in tort for defective products. See Singleton v. International Harvester Co., 4th Cir., 685 F.2d 112 (1981) (applying § 402 A as law of Maryland in defective design case).

Section 402 A reads:

"Special Liability of Seller of Product for Physical Harm to User or Consumer

(1) One who sells any product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer or to his property is subject to liability for physical harm thereby caused to the ultimate user or consumer, or to his property, if

(a) the seller is engaged in the business of selling such a product, and

(b) it is expected to and does reach the user or consumer without substantial change in the condition in which it is sold.

(2) The rule stated in Subsection (1) applies although

(a) the seller has exercised all possible care in the preparation and sale of his product, and

(b) the user or consumer has not bought the product from or entered into any contractual relation with the seller." Id.

The Maryland Court of Appeals adopted a seven factors test for determining whether a product was defectively designed under § 402 A. Those factors are " '(1) the usefulness and desirability of the product. (2) the availability of other and safer products to meet the same need, (3) the likelihood of injury and its probable seriousness, (4) the obviousness of the danger, (5) common knowledge and normal public expectation of the danger (particularly for established products), (6) the avoidability of injury by care in use of the product (including the effect of instructions or warnings), and (7) the ability to eliminate the danger without seriously impairing the usefulness of the product or making it unduly expensive.' "

Phipps v. General Motors Corp., 363 A.2d at 959, quoting Wade, Strict Tort Liability of Manufacturers, 19 Sw. L.J. 5, 17 (1965).

After Phipps, then, a balancing test weighing the advantage and disadvantages of the allegedly defective design vis-a-vis an alternate design must be performed.

C.

The theory of plaintiffs' case at trial was that defendant's helicopter was defective in design under Restatement (Second) 402A, supra, because it lacked an in-cockpit warning device and that this design defect rendered the helicopter fundamentally unsafe and ultimately caused the deaths of plaintiffs' decedents. We summarize the evidence bearing upon this contention.

Plaintiffs introduced evidence showing that an in-cockpit warning device for blade pressure was a necessary component of a helicopter designed for long-range flights and that such a system was available for use in certain other helicopter models. Although there was evidence that the CH-53D model in question was only designed with short range flights in mind, (i.e. flights of less than 5 hours) plaintiffs presented evidence that long range flights were contemplated by virtue of fuel extension tanks and a "hot refueling" technique. Provisions for the use of the fuel extension tanks were included in the specifications. "Hot refueling" was a method by which the helicopter could take on fuel while on the ground without the pilot having to shut off the engines, but precluding an inspection of the BIM gauges even though the aircraft was on the ground.

Defendant countered with evidence: (1) that cockpit BIMs were unreliable and dangerous because a false warning of loss of blade pressure might cause a pilot to bail out or attempt to land his aircraft in rough terrain unnecessarily damaging or destroying it in the process; and (2) that defendant repeatedly recommended installation of cockpit BIMs in the Sea Stallions upon learning that they were being used for long range flights exceeding two hours, but that those recommendations went unheeded by military authorities.

Defendant's defense of plaintiff's allegation of defective design by showing that the helicopter BIM system was an adequate safety device and that the negligence of both the air and maintenance crews resulted in the crash. To that end, defendant introduced evidence that the helicopter BIM showed black on each of the four days prior to the helicopter's ill-fated flight, and that the crew failed to remove and replace the depressurized spar despite such warnings and despite the mandate of the maintenance instruction manual. Instead, the spar was simply repressurized and the spars left in the at rest position during which there would normally be no depressurization through loss of nitrogen even though a crack in the spar itself was evident. There was also a lack of evidence concerning the ground crew's performance of a preflight "start up and stop" blade pressure check. Defendant also relied on the testimony of a Marine Corps officer, who, on the issue of the maintenance crew's failure to heed four days of black BIM warnings, conceded that "we had just missed it."

To parry defendant's argument and buttress their own claim that the helicopter without a cockpit BIM was fatally defective, plaintiffs presented testimony concerning the inability of the helicopter's BIM system to distinguish between a loss of pressure due to a cracking blade and a drop in pressure resulting from a defect in the BIM system itself, such as a leaking pressure gauge. Plaintiff claimed that a "boy crying wolf" attitude developed among the maintenance crews because of repeated false warnings caused by the defective pressure gauges themselves.

Upon reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, the Trial Judge found that there was a jury question presented on whether the absence of a cockpit warning device constituted a design defect and necessarily denied defendant's Motion for a Directed Verdict on the issue of liability. ³ We agree that there was a jury question on this issue. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A, supra. Compare Roy v. Star Chopper Co., Inc., D.R.I., 442 F.Supp. 1010, 1020 (1977), aff'd, 5th Cir., 584 F.2d 1124 (1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 916, 99 S.Ct. 1234, 59 L.Ed.2d 466 (1978); Foster v. Ford Motor Co., 5th Cir., 616 F.2d 1304, 1309-11 (1980); Schell v. AMF, Inc., 3rd Cir., 567 F.2d 1259, 1261 (1977); Dorsey v. Yoder Co., E.D.Pa., 331...