Horn v. General Motors Corp.

Decision Date30 June 1976
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
Parties, 551 P.2d 398 Lillian Y. HORN, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION et al., Defendants and Appellants. L.A. 30235. . In Bank

Spray, Gould & Bowers, L. Raymond Millard, Richard A. Numeyer, Los Angeles, Ross L. Malone, James P. Melican, Thomas W. Watkins, Detroit, Mich., Haverstock, Gray, Plant, Mooty & Anderson and Richard A. Bowman, Minneapolis, Minn., for defendants and appellants.

Pollock, Pollock & Fay and Robert S. Schlifkin, Los Angeles, for plaintiff and respondent.

Robert E. Cartwright, San Francisco, William H. Lally, Sacramento, Sanford M. Gage, Beverly Hills, Floyd A. Demanes, Burlingame, Stephen I. Zetterberg, Claremont, and Leonard Sacks, Encino, as amici curiae on behalf of plaintiff and respondent.

BY THE COURT.

In this action for damages for personal injuries, defendants General Motors Corporation and Fletcher Chevrolet, Inc., appeal from a judgment entered upon a jury verdict in favor of plaintiff.

About 9 p.m. on the evening of September 23, 1966, plaintiff Lillian Y. Horn was driving her 1965 Chevrolet station wagon down Laurel Canyon Boulevard, a curving Los Angeles street. She was accompanied by her two sons; her six-year-old son was in the front seat and her nine-year-old son in the rear. As she would downhill, at approximately 25 miles per hour, a car rounding a curve suddenly swung into her lane, its headlights temporarily blinding her. She swerved to her right to avoid the car, bounced off the right curb across the street to the left and into a concrete reinforced abutment.

As she steered to the right, plaintiff brought her left hand across the horn cap in the center of the steering wheel; at the same time, with her right hand, she tried to hold her son on the front seat. She felt and saw something fly between herself and her son; it was later established that this was the horn cap. When the car hit the abutment, plaintiff felt a burning sensation as her face hit the 'center part' of the steering wheel. The 'center part,' following removal of the horn cap, contained three sharp prongs that held the horn cap in place. Plaintiff sustained a laceration of the chin, a displaced fracture of her jaw, a fracture of her left ear canal, and the loss of two teeth.

Plaintiff brought this action against defendant General Motors Corporation, the manufacturer of the station wagon, and defendant Fletcher Chevrolet, Inc., the dealer from whom she purchased it. The case was tried on the single theory of strict liability in tort based on a defective product. In detail plaintiff's theory was that the automobile was defective in that the horn cap was easily removable in normal use of the vehicle thereby exposing three sharp prongs, and that, as a result, when plaintiff was involved in a collision not caused by defendants, she sustained injuries which were measurably aggravated because of this defect is design or manufacture. In short: the defective horn cap caused plaintiff injuries which were greater than the injuries she otherwise would have received as a result of the collision. The jury returned a verdict against both defendants for damages in the sum of $45,000.

1. Cause of Action for Aggravation of Injuries Due to Defect

Defendants contend that they are not liable as a matter of law because a collision is not a normal, proper or intended use of an automobile and therefore the manufacturer is under no duty to design an automobile so as to prevent any aggravation of injuries resulting from a collision which occurs for reasons wholly unconnected with the design and manufacture of the automobile. (Evans v. General Motors Corporation (7th Cir. 1966) 359 F.2d 822; Hoenig & Werber, Automobile Crashworthiness: An Untenable Doctrine (1971) 20 Clev.St.L.Rev. 578.) In Cronin v. J.B.E. Olson Corp. (1972) 8 Cal.3d 121, 126, 104 Cal.Rptr. 433, 437, 501 P.2d 1153, 1157, this court acknowledged the existence of this line of authority but specifically rejected it: 'Although a collision may not be the 'normal' or intended use of a motor vehicle, vehicle manufacturers must take accidents into consideration as reasonably foreseeable occurrences involving their products. (Passwaters v. General Motor Corporation (8th Cir. 1972) 454 F.2d 1270, 1276; Larsen v. General Motors Corporation (8th Cir. 1968) 391 F.2d 495, 501--503; 80 Harv.L.Rev. 688, 689 (1967); contra, Evans v. General Motors Corporation (7th Cir. 1966) 359 F.2d 822, 825 . . ..) The design and manufacture of products should not be carried out in an industrial vacuum but with recognition of the realities of their everyday use.' In Cronin the driver of a bakery truck was injured when another vehicle forced the truck off the road and into a ditch. The impact broke an aluminum hasp holding the bread trays in place and the trays were driven forward against the driver, propelling him through the windshield. We upheld a verdict in favor of the plaintiff and against the manufacturer of the truck declaring that liability rested not on the basis that the hasp caused the collision 'but only that its defectiveness was a substantial factor contributing to (the plaintiff's) injuries.' (Id. at p. 127, 104 Cal.Rptr. at p. 437, 501 P.2d at p. 1157.)

In the instant case the jury was properly instructed to the effect that if the station wagon was defectively designed or manufactured in such a manner that the horn assembly caused plaintiff to sustain greater injuries in the collision than she would have otherwise sustained absent the defect, then the manufacturer and distributor of the vehicle would be liable to the extent of such aggravation of her injuries. This instruction contained a principle of liability consistent with our ruling in Cronin.

2. Sufficiency of the Evidence

Defendants claim that there is insufficient evidence to support the following three factual ingredients allegedly essential to plaintiff's case: (a) That the design of the horn cap was defective; (b) that plaintiff's jaw in fact came into contact with the center hub area of the steering wheel after displacement of the horn cap and exposure of the underlying prongs; and (c) that plaintiff's injuries were aggravated due to contact with the exposed prongs in the center hub area of the steering wheel. We view the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiff, giving her the benefit of every reasonable inference and resolving all conflicts in her favor in accordance with the standard of review long adhered to by this court. (Crawford v. Southern Pac. Co. (1935) 3 Cal.2d 427, 429, 45 P.2d 183.)

(a) Plaintiff's expert testified that the horn cap was defective in that it could be easily knocked off in the course of normal use of the car, thereby exposing the sharp prongs underneath and that there were several alternative ways of designing the horn cap to prevent its being knocked off. Defendants' expert, on cross-examination after testifying that the purpose of the prongs was to keep the horn cap in place, acknowledged that it was foreseeable to the manufacturer that a driver's hand would pass across the horn button while the steering wheel was being turned, that it was foreseeable that the vehicle would be subject to sudden stops and possible impacts, that the horn cap could have been affixed by screws thereby both eliminating the prongs and preventing the cap's displacement, and that the increased cost, if any, of such an alternative would not have been significant. This evidence is clearly supportive of the jury's implied finding that the fastening of the horn cap by three sharp prongs in such a way that it could be easily displaced and the prongs thereby exposed to possible contact by the driver during a collision or sudden stop, constituted a defect in design or manufacture. Defendants' contention that this evidence is insufficient because it fails to establish that this design varies from the state-of-the-art as reflected in the design of other cars in the same year is without merit. We specifically rejected the necessity for such proof in establishing a defect in Cronin v. J. B. E. Olson, supra, 8 Cal.3d 121, 125--126, 104 Cal.Rptr. 433, 501 P.2d 1153. (see Jiminez v. Sears, Roebuck & Co (1971) 4 Cal.3d 379, 383, 93 Cal.Rptr. 769, 482 P.2d 681).

(b) Although plaintiff did not directly state that the horn cap came off and that her face hit the exposed prongs, there was clearly substantial evidence which would support a finding by the jury to that effect. Plaintiff recalled her hand crossing over the center of the steering wheel; indeed during an experiment at trial the same hand movement resulted in the horn cap being knocked off. She felt and saw something fly between herself and her son after she brought her left hand across the steering wheel in swerving to the right in order to avoid the oncoming car. After the accident, she saw that the horn cap was detached. She distinctly recalled that her face had collided with the center part of the steering wheel and that she then experienced a burning sensation. There were no other sharp surfaces in the center of the steering wheel, and the injury pattern on plaintiff's face matched the pattern of the exposed prongs.

(c) Defendants pointed out that plaintiff failed to present any evidence as to the type and severity of injuries she would have received if the horn cap had been in place, whereas defendants presented uncontradicted evidence to the effect that the force of the collision was such that plaintiff would have broken her jaw even if the horn cap had been in place. Therefore the argue that there is insufficient evidence to establish that the exposed prongs caused any injuries at all. To put the argument another way, since plaintiff's jaw would have been broken by the collision in any event, the defect in the horn assembly actually caused no injury. Plaintiff's expert testified that the force with...

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