Mikolajczyk v. Ford Motor Co., 1-05-3133.

• Decision Date: 22 November 2006
• Docket Number: No. 1-05-3133.,1-05-3133.
• Citation: 859 N.E.2d 201,307 Ill.Dec. 201
• Parties: Connie MIKOLAJCZYK, Individually and as Special Administrator of the Estate of James Mikolajczyk, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY and Mazda Motor Corporation, Defendants-Appellants (William D. Timberlake, Defendant).
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois

859 N.E.2d 201 307 Ill.Dec. 201 Connie MIKOLAJCZYK, Individually and as Special Administrator of the Estate of James Mikolajczyk, Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
FORD MOTOR COMPANY and Mazda Motor Corporation, Defendants-Appellants (William D. Timberlake, Defendant). No. 1-05-3133. Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, Third Division. November 22, 2006.

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Winston & Strawn LLP, Chicago, Donohue, Brown, Mathewson & Smyth, Chicago (James R. Thompson, Bruce R. Braun, Pei Y. Chung, Karen Kies DeGrand, Mark H. Boyle, of counsel), for Appellants.

Pfaff & Gill, Ltd., Chicago (Bruce R. Pfaff, Michael T. Gill, of counsel), for Appellee.

Justice GREIMAN delivered the opinion of the court:

Plaintiff Connie Mikolajczyk, individually and as special administrator of the estate of her deceased husband James Mikolajczyk (hereinafter referred to as James), brought suit alleging strict products liability for a defective design against defendants Ford Motor Company and Mazda Motor Corporation (hereinafter referred to as defendants) and negligence against defendant

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William D. Timberlake (hereinafter referred to as Timberlake). James died when his Ford Escort was hit from behind by Timberlake's car. Summary judgment was entered against Timberlake and the case proceeded to a jury trial on the strict products liability claim. The jury found Timberlake 60% responsible for causing James's death and defendants 40% responsible. The jury awarded plaintiff $2 million for loss of money, goods and services and $25 million for loss of society and sexual relations. On appeal, defendants contend (1) that the trial court erred in instructing the jury on the law of strict liability for design defects; (2) that the trial court erred in declining to instruct the jury about damage apportionment, the effect of Timberlake's intoxication and the concept of sole proximate cause; (3) that the trial court erred in admitting emotional, prejudicial hearsay evidence about other accidents; (4) that the jury's verdict was arbitrary and excessive; (5) that the cumulative effect of the trial court's errors requires a new trial; and (6) that section 2-1303 of the Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/2-1303 (West 2004)) is unconstitutional.

The trial in this case took place over a period of 2 1/2 weeks. Numerous lay and expert witnesses testified. The parties do not dispute the facts concerning the accident or the extent of James's injuries. Instead, as stated above, they dispute the propriety of the given instructions, the court's admission of certain evidence, the amount of the award and the constitutionality of a statutory provision. Therefore, we set out only those facts necessary for our discussion of the issues raised.

At 8 p.m. on February 4, 2000, James was stopped at a stoplight, sitting in the driver's seat of his 1996 Ford Escort. His daughter Elizabeth was seated behind him in the back driver's side seat asleep. James and Elizabeth were both wearing their safety belts. Timberlake, traveling at speeds upwards of 60 miles per hour, crashed into the right rear of the Escort, causing it to spin into the intersection and collide with a van. Timberlake was intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Upon impact, James's seat flattened backwards, or "ramped" backwards, and he was ejected toward the rear of the car. James's head struck the back seat of the car and Elizabeth's legs were injured by the flattened front seat. James suffered brain damage from the impact. Because his prognosis was hopeless, James's life support was terminated and he passed away on February 7, 2000.

Plaintiff filed suit against defendants for strict products liability, alleging that James's car seat was defectively designed with inadequate strength making it unreasonably dangerous, and against Timberlake for negligence. Summary judgment was entered in plaintiff's favor against Timberlake and the case proceeded to trial on plaintiff's products liability claim, for a determination of whether the seat was defectively designed, whether the design proximately caused James's injuries, the relative responsibility of defendants and Timberlake and for an assessment of damages.

At trial, the following facts were adduced. The driver's seat of James's Escort was co-designed by defendants and was known as a CT20 seat. The CT20 seat was a "yielding seat," meaning that when force was applied to it, it yielded in the direction of the force, in effect, absorbing some of the shock from an impact. The CT20 exceeded federal safety requirements. However, plaintiff's expert testified that compliance with the standard does not make a seat safe while defendants' expert testified that Ford does not look to the standard for advice concerning

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how to design a seat. In the alternative, what is known as a "rigid seat" was also available. In a rear impact accident, a rigid seat transfers the energy of the collision in the opposite direction of the collision, so that, upon impact, the passenger is thrown forward. When James's yielding seat ramped backwards during his accident with Timberlake, it performed according to its design.

Plaintiff's experts, including engineer L. Morrie Shaw, biomechanics expert Joseph Burton and seat design expert Kenneth Saczalski, testified that the yielding seat design proximately caused James's death and that the use of a rigid seat design was entirely feasible, would have protected James from his fatal injuries, would have better protected a backseat passenger and should have been utilized. Burton and Saczalski explained that the forces involved in James's accident were reasonably foreseeable by defendants, noting that automakers conduct crash tests under circumstances similar to James's accident. Saczalski testified that rigid seat technology was developed in the 1960s, rigid seats were built in the 1970s and became commercially available in the 1980s. Burton further explained that when a yielding seat ramps back, the use of a seatbelt offers the passenger no protection. The ramping of a yielding seat permits a passenger to slide up the seat and leaves the passenger vulnerable to striking structures in the rear of his car. Burton further testified that he had investigated accidents involving half of the speed involved in this accident in which the yielding seat had performed the same way James's had and had caused injury and death.

Saczalski cited several examples of automobiles that were contemporaneous with the 1996 Escort that used rigid, rather than yielding, seat designs, including the 1996 Chrysler Sebring. Saczalski conducted a series of tests on the 1996 Escort, leaving the standard, yielding seat on the front driver's side and replacing the front passenger seat with a 1996 Sebring rigid seat and impacting the car from the rear at various speeds with various-sized dummies in the seats. From these tests, Saczalski concluded that rigid seats protect their occupants in highspeed, rear-impact accidents while yielding seats do not. More specifically, Saczalski found that the risk of severe to fatal head injury was 10 to 25 times greater with the yielding seat.

Plaintiff's experts admitted that a serious injury does not result every time a seat yields in a high-speed, rear-impact accident. They conceded that, if a passenger is not perfectly aligned in his seat at the time of an impact, a rigid seat can cause serious neck injuries and that, in a low-speed collision, an out-of-alignment passenger is actually safer in a yielding seat than in a rigid seat. They further agreed that very few cars that were on the market in 1996 met their specifications for a nondefective design.

Plaintiff's experts were permitted to testify, over defendants' objections, to three accidents that also occurred in Escorts and resulted in injuries and death to the passengers therein when the front seats of the Escorts ramped back on impact.

Defendants' experts, including Ford design engineer Roger Burnett, accident reconstruction expert Gregory Smith, research engineer Andrew Levitt, biomechanics experts Catherine Corrigan and Priyaranjan Prasad and Mazda engineer Shuji Kumano, testified that very few cars that were on the market at the time of James's car were equipped with rigid seats. In designing the 1996 Escort seat, defendants considered all types of accidents, not just severe collisions as occurred to James. Defendants rejected the rigid seat design for safety reasons.

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The rigid design presents a serious risk of head and neck injuries even in a low-speed collision. On the other hand, a yielding seat presents little to no risk of neck injuries in a low-speed collision and a lower risk of neck injuries in all accidents. Moreover, a yielding seat better protects an out-of-position passenger from neck and spine injuries because it absorbs the impact of the accident and keeps the passenger's head and spine aligned and has a risk of causing severe injuries only in very high impact accidents, which are rare. Yielding seats also better protect back seat passengers who may be thrown into them during an accident. In fact, defendants' experts opined that Elizabeth would have been more severely injured had James's been a rigid seat. Defendants' experts testified that very few cars on the market at the time of James's Escort utilized rigid seat designs and that, because the Escort was a "high-volume vehicle," unlike the cars cited by plaintiff's experts as utilizing rigid seats, it was not possible for defendants to use a strong seat, like that used in a Sebring, in an Escort.

The surviving members of the Mikolajczyk family and friends of the family also testified. At the time of his death, James was 46 years old and was expected to live for 31.9 additional years. In 1999, James...