McCabe v. American Honda Motor Co.

• Decision Date: 05 August 2002
• Docket Number: No. B151816.,B151816.
• Citation: 123 Cal.Rptr.2d 303,100 Cal.App.4th 1111
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: Lucille McCABE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO., Inc., et al., Defendants and Respondents.

123 Cal.Rptr.2d 303

100 Cal.App.4th 1111

Lucille McCABE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO., Inc., et al., Defendants and Respondents.

No. B151816.

Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7.

August 5, 2002.

The Legal Group and Alan M. Goldberg for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Feeney Kellett Wienner & Bush, Bloomfield Hills, MI, Derek S. Whitefield and Alex W. Craigie, Los Angeles, for Defendants and Respondents.

PERLUSS, J.

Plaintiff Lucille McCabe appeals from a judgment entered in a products liability action after the trial court granted summary judgment for defendants American Honda Motor Company, Incorporated and Saturn of the Valley, Incorporated (Saturn). McCabe was injured when the driver's side air bag in her Honda Civic failed to deploy in a frontal collision with another car. McCabe sued Honda, the air bag's manufacturer, and Saturn, the reseller, alleging the air bag was defective in both its manufacture and its design.¹ The trial court granted Honda's² motion for summary judgment, reasoning the expert declaration from a Honda engineer established that the air bag was not intended to inflate under the circumstances of the crash and that McCabe's testimony that she "expected" the air bag to deploy was insufficient, without expert testimony, to raise a triable issue of material fact as to product defect.

On appeal, McCabe contends she raised triable issues of fact as to design defect under the "consumer expectation theory" and maintains the court erred in holding the consumer expectation test inapplicable as a matter of law. We agree McCabe raised triable issues of fact as to whether a driver's side air bag, in the disputed factual context of the frontal collision at issue in this case, is the kind of product about which consumers can form minimum safety assumptions. Consequently, it was error for the trial court to conclude, as a matter of law, that the consumer expectation test was inapplicable.

Summary judgment was also improper because Honda failed to provide any evidence negating the alternative, risk-benefit theory of design defect available to McCabe. Under that alternative test, a product that causes injury may be defective in design notwithstanding its satisfaction of consumer expectations if the design contains an "excessive danger" that outweighs its relative merit.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

On September 2, 1999, while traveling westbound in her Civic, McCabe came to a full stop in the left turn lane of a controlled intersection and waited for a break in oncoming traffic to make a left turn. According to McCabe, as the light turned yellow and she prepared to make her left turn, a Cadillac traveling eastbound at a "high speed" collided "head on" with her Civic. Although the Civic was equipped with a driver's side air bag, the air bag did not deploy in the crash. McCabe, who suffered damage to her face and teeth in the accident when her head slammed against the steering wheel, sued Honda and Saturn, alleging the Civic's air bag was defective in its design and/or manufacture.

A. Honda's Motion for Summary Judgment

Honda moved for summary judgment, arguing that the air bag performed in accordance with its intended design. Honda included with its motion the 1995 owner's manual for the Civic, advising the consumer that the air bag system is designed to inflate only "in a severe frontal collision" comparable to "a crash into a parked car at 25 [miles per hour]," and will not inflate "in a moderate frontal collision, or during a rear impact, side impact, or a roll-over even if the impact is severe." The owner's manual also included an illustration depicting the "frontal collision range" to span from the outside corner of one front headlight to the outside corner of the other.

Honda also included the expert declaration of Mary Christopherson, a Honda staff engineer involved in the design and testing of automotive air bags. Christopherson explained that determining whether an air bag should have deployed after a given collision required "an analysis of the angle of impact and the longitudinal deceleration experienced by the vehicle in the collision as compared with the severity of a 12 [miles per hour] full frontal impact." According to Christopherson, the air bag is designed to deploy "when the crash sensors predict in the first moments of a collision that the deceleration of the vehicle along its longitudinal axis will be more severe than a full frontal barrier impact at or above 12 [miles per hour]," and is designed not to deploy if the "longitudinal deceleration of the vehicle is less severe than a full frontal barrier impact below 8 [miles per hour]." In addition, the "`frontal collision range' for deployment is defined as an impact with a principal direction of force that is within 30 degrees of the centerline of the vehicle. Air bags are not intended to deploy in impacts in which the principle [sic] force vector is outside the 30 degree range, unless the crash severity is so severe that the longitudinal deceleration of the vehicle exceeds the severity of a 12 [miles per hour] full frontal barrier impact."

Christopherson reconstructed the accident based on the "physical damage to the vehicles as depicted in the photographs," and concluded the "left front corner of the Civic made initial contact with the left front wheel area of the Cadillac" at a 35degree frontal collision range, outside the "30 degree frontal collision range" required for the air bag to deploy. She determined the longitudinal component of the crash was approximately four miles per hour, "very clearly less severe" than a 12-mile-per-hour "full frontal barrier impact" in which the air bag is designed to deploy. Based on the foregoing, Christopherson opined that the air bag system performed as designed, and there was "no evidence of a defect"

B. McCabe's Opposition

In opposition to the summary judgment motion, McCabe maintained the Cadillac collided with her Civic "head on." McCabe included photographs of the Civic showing extensive damage to the left front hood area and to the left side of the car and claimed the collision occurred within the frontal collision range identified in the owner's manual. McCabe also included witness testimony, including her own and that of the Cadillac's driver, that the Cadillac was traveling at a speed at or in excess of 35 miles per hour when it collided with her Civic. McCabe testified she purposely purchased a car with an air bag for safety reasons and expected the air bag would deploy in a high-speed head-on collision like the one in this case.

C. Honda's Reply and the Trial Court's Ruling

In reply, Honda observed that McCabe offered no expert testimony refuting Christopherson's expert opinion that the air bag performed in accordance with its intended design. Honda argued that the consumer expectation test set forth in Barker v. Lull Engineering Co. (1978) 20 Cal.3d 413, 143 Cal.Rptr. 225, 573 P.2d 443 (Barker), permitting a plaintiff to prove a design defect with circumstantial evidence that the product performed below the safety standard an ordinary consumer would expect, did not apply to the deployment of an air bag, which, it maintained, involved sophisticated technology and was outside the ordinary experience of the consumer.

The trial court granted summary judgment for Honda, reasoning that, by omitting from her opposition any expert testimony contravening Christopherson's declaration, McCabe had failed to produce evidence sufficient to raise a triable issue of fact as to whether the air bag should have deployed under the circumstances of this accident. The court concluded, without explanation, that the consumer expectation test, permitting a plaintiff to establish a design defect without resort to expert testimony, was inapplicable to the circumstances of this case.

McCabe filed a timely notice of appeal.

CONTENTION

McCabe contends (1) the trial court erred in concluding the consumer expectation test for defective design was inapplicable under the facts of this case; and (2) under the consumer expectation test, she raised triable issues of fact as to whether the air bag's design was defective.

DISCUSSION

1. Standard of Review.

Summary judgment is proper where the evidence shows there is no triable issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (c); Aguilar v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (2001) 25 Cal.4th 826, 843, 107 Cal.Rptr.2d 841, 24 P.3d 493.) To satisfy this burden, a defendant moving for summary judgment must establish that one or more of the elements of a cause of action cannot be established or that a complete defense exists to the cause of action. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (o).) If the defendant meets this burden, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to show a triable issue of material fact exists as to either the particular cause of action or the proffered defense thereto. (Ibid.) The plaintiff may not rely on mere allegations or denials of the pleadings but instead must set forth specific facts demonstrating a triable issue of material fact exists. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (o); Aguilar, at p. 843, 107 Cal.Rptr.2d 841, 24 P.3d 493.)

We review the trial court's grant of summary judgment de novo. (Merrill v. Navegar, Inc. (2001) 26 Cal.4th 465, 476, 110 Cal.Rptr.2d 370, 28 P.3d 116.) The evidence presented by the moving party is strictly construed while that of the opposing party liberally construed to include any inferences reasonably deducible from the evidence. (Savage v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (1993) 21 Cal.App.4th 434, 440, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 305.) We do not engage in a credibility determination or a weighing of the evidence; instead, all doubts or evidentiary conflicts are to be resolved against the moving party. (Binder v. Aetna Life Insurance Company (1999) 75 Cal.App.4th 832, 840, 89 Cal.Rptr.2d 540.) We affirm summary judgment only where...