Meekins v. Ford Motor Co., 94C-04-028

• Decision Date: 12 November 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94C-04-028,94C-04-028
• Citation: 699 A.2d 339
• Parties: Barry W. MEEKINS, Plaintiff, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, a Delaware corporation, Defendant. C.A. . Submitted:
• Court: Delaware Superior Court

Page 339

699 A.2d 339

Barry W. MEEKINS, Plaintiff, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, a Delaware corporation, Defendant.

C.A. No. 94C-04-028.

Superior Court of Delaware Kent County.

Submitted: Nov. 12, 1996.

Decided: March 5, 1997.

Reargument Denied: March 27, 1997.

Upon Consideration of plaintiff's Motion In Limine To Exclude Thai Testimony of an Accident Reconstruction Expert.

Mary Sherlock, Brown, Shiels & Chasanov, Dover, for Plaintiff.

John D. Balaguer, White & Williams, Wilmington, for Defendant.

TERRY, Resident Judge.

BACKGROUND

This is a case based on a claim for an enhanced injury as the result of an automobile accident. Plaintiff has filed a motion in limine to exclude the trial testimony of an accident reconstruction expert hired by the defendant who will offer testimony regarding plaintiff's negligence in causing the accident and the dynamics of the resulting injury which plaintiff claims to have sustained.

The automobile which the plaintiff Barry Meekins was driving collided with another vehicle at an intersectional collision. The air bag installed in Meekins' Lincoln Towncar deployed upon impact. Mr. Meekins sustained injuries to the fingers on his left hand. It is Meekins' position that his fingers were injured because of a defect in the air bag module design which caused them to be crushed against the steering wheel when the air bag inflated. He says that if it had not been for the defective air bag, he would have sustained no injury. Ford Motor Company, the manufacturer of the Lincoln, contends that the injury was not caused by the air bag but rather by the violent turning of the steering wheel engendered by the collision.

It is against this background that the issue is presented. Ford says that the accident was caused because Meekins negligently failed to stop at a stop sign and it has raised comparative negligence as a defense. Meekins says that he did stop at the stop sign but even if he did not, and even if his negligence caused the accident, the court should not allow the defense of comparative negligence in an enhanced injury case.

ENHANCED INJURY THEORY

Before discussing this issue it is necessary to examine the nature of an enhanced injury claim, also variously called a crashworthy claim or a second collision claim. The seminal case is Larsen v. General Motors Corp., ¹ where the Eighth Circuit considered a case involving a plaintiff who was in a collision where the impact caused the steering wheel to injure him. The argument was that the defectively designed steering wheel caused him to suffer injuries more severe than he otherwise would have suffered had there been no design defect. The Larsen court held that even though the design defect did not contribute to the cause of the collision, the plaintiff had a cause of action against the car's manufacturer to recover damages for "that portion of the damage or injury caused by the defective design over and above the damages or injury that probably would have occurred as a result of the impact or collision absent the defective design." ² The court held that a manufacturer must expect that collisions are incidental to the normal use of an automobile, and therefore it must use reasonable care to design its product to avoid subjecting the user to an unreasonable risk of injury as the result of a collision. Thus, a manufacturer can be liable on negligence principles not only for a defect which causes a collision but also for one which enhances injuries received in a collision over and above those which would have been sustained absent the defect. As was stated by Thomas Harris in "Enhanced Injury The enhanced injury, crashworthiness or second collision claim, then, is one where the damages sought are not for injuries sustained in the original collision but for those sustained in the second impact where some design defect caused an exacerbated injury which would not have otherwise occurred as a result of the original collision. A good example of this situation would be where a vehicle collides with some object and the seat belt system fails thereby causing the occupant to be ejected from the vehicle. The occupant suffers severe injuries due to the ejection, whereas if he had been held in the car by a properly designed seat belt his injuries would have been non-existent or minor. Although the manufacturer of the car did not cause the collision, the manufacturer is liable for any enhanced injuries sustained by the occupant as a result of the failure of the negligently designed seat belt.

Theory: An Analytic Framework " ³ "enhanced injury liability is based on the premise that some objects, while they are not made for the purpose of undergoing impact, should be reasonably designed to minimize the injury-producing effect of such contact." ⁴

Delaware has recognized the viability of a claim for enhanced injuries in General Motors Corporation v. Wolhar ⁵ where the court said:

In a crashworthiness claim, a plaintiff does not seek compensation for injuries received from the initial collision between the vehicle and another object. Instead, the plaintiff seeks compensation for injuries that result from the "second collision" which occurs when the plaintiff strikes the interior of the vehicle or is thrown from the vehicle. [citations omitted] Second collision injuries are often referred to as "enhanced injuries." [citations omitted] Thus, in a crashworthiness claim, the plaintiffs seek compensation for injuries over and above the injury that would have occurred as a result of the impact of collision, absent the vehicle's alleged negligently defective design. ⁶

DISCUSSION

Having sketched the parameters of the enhanced injury theory, we come to the issue in this case. Should the negligence of the plaintiff in causing the initial collision be compared with the negligence of the manufacturer in designing a product which causes enhanced injuries due to the so-called second collision.

(a) Comparative negligence is not a defense.

There are cases and law review articles on both sides of the question. The view against applying comparative negligence in an enhanced injury situation is premised on the argument that it is illogical, because it results in comparing apples to oranges. Manufacturers should foresee the fact that some of the vehicles they manufacture will be involved in collisions. Therefore, they have a duty to make reasonable efforts to design a vehicle which will minimize injuries regardless of the cause of the collision. ⁷ The cause of the collision therefore has no bearing on the duty of the manufacturer to design a vehicle so as to minimize injuries from collisions which the manufacture knows will in many cases occur. "A negligent operator," according to Harris, ⁸ "is entitled to the same protection against unnecessary injury as the careful user of the same product is entitled." Other legal commentators have taken the The leading cases are grounded on the premise that since a manufacturer has a duty to expect that some of the vehicles it builds will be involved in collisions, it has a duty to take reasonable steps to minimize the injurious effect of an impact no matter how it occurs. In Reed v. Chrysler Corp. ¹⁰ the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that an affirmative defense based on intoxication could not be asserted against a person who was injured in a jeep rollover and who attributed his enhanced injuries to a defective roof design. The court observed:

same position. ⁹

The theory, which presupposes the occurrence of accidents precipitated for myriad reasons, focuses alone on the enhancement of resulting injuries. The rule does not pretend that the design defect had anything to do with causing the accident. It is enough if the design defect increased the damages. So any participation by the plaintiff in bringing the accident about is quite beside the point. ¹¹

In Mills v. Ford Motor Corp., ¹² the court also refused to compare the plaintiff's negligence in causing the accident to defendant's negligence in designing a roof which collapsed during a rollover and allegedly enhanced the plaintiff's injuries. The court held that since the claim for the injuries arising out of the initial collision could be distinguished from the claim for the enhanced injuries arising out of the defective roof design, the driver and manufacturer did not unite together to create a single injury. Therefore the driver's negligence is not relevant. Another case, Ford Motor Co. v. Hill, ¹³ holds that it is not logical to compare the plaintiff's negligence in causing an accident to a manufacture's negligence in designing a vehicle which is not crashworthy, since a manufacturer should foresee that people will negligently crash its vehicles and get into collisions. The manufacturer has a duty to design against such an occurrence, so the negligence of an operator in causing the initial impact is not relevant to whether a design defect which did not cause the initial impact is the proximate cause of the enhanced damages.

An article in the Montana Law Review ¹⁴ by Robert C. Reichert contains a thorough analysis of the reasons why the comparative negligence of a plaintiff in causing the initial collision should not be compared to the negligence of a manufacturer whose defectively designed product caused an enhanced injury. Mr. Reichert asks: "[I]f all of a plaintiff's conduct is considered, how could liability be apportioned between a plaintiff and a manufacturer when a plaintiff is 100 percent at fault in causing the first collision?" ¹⁵ He goes on to explain that if the manufacturer in a second collision accident has no fault in causing the initial collision, there will be no recovery if the accident-causing fault of a plaintiff who is the sole cause of an accident is compared to that of the manufacturer. Since Larsen created the theory that a manufacturer is liable for enhanced injuries even though its negligence did not cause the first collision, the implication which...