Nanda v. Ford Motor Co.

• Decision Date: 25 March 1975
• Docket Number: No. 73--1726,73--1726
• Citation: 509 F.2d 213
• Parties: Chitta R. NANDA, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 213

509 F.2d 213

Chitta R. NANDA, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.

No. 73--1726.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 10, 1974.

Decided Dec. 27, 1974.

Rehearing Denied March 25, 1975.

Francis D. Morrissey, Chicago, Ill., for appellant.

Richard J. Phelan, Chicago, Ill., Donald M. Reno, Sr., Champaign, Ill., for appellee.

Before FAIRCHILD, PELL and TONE, Circuit Judges.

TONE, Circuit Judge.

The principal issue before us in this diversity case is whether under Illinois law an automobile manufacturer has a duty so to design and to manufacture its product that its occupants will not be subjected to an unreasonable risk of injury if a collision occurs which is not itself caused by any defects in the condition of the automobile. We hold that such a duty exists in the circumstances of this case and affirm the District Court's judgment on a jury verdict in favor of the plaintiff.

The evidence, 'when viewed in the aspect most favorable to' the plaintiff (Pedrick v. Peoria E. R.R., 37 Ill.2d 494, 510, 229 N.E.2d 504, 513--514 (1967)), supports the following version of the facts:

At about 8:30 P.M. on October 29, 1967 plaintiff Chitta R. Nanda, driving alone in his 1967 Ford Cortina, stopped in the inner northbound lane of Route 45 in Urbana, Illinois, to wait for an opening in southbound traffic so he could turn left into an access road. While stopped, the Cortina was struck in the rear by a 1962 Oldsmobile traveling at a speed the jury could have found was as low as 10 miles per hour. This collision injured no one and caused only relatively minor damage to the front of the Oldsmobile. The Cortina, however, was spun around and pushed into the southbound lanes, where it was struck in the rear by a southbound Rambler. The Rambler was traveling at about 40 miles per hour when the driver saw the Cortina and applied the brakes, which grabbed before the collision with the Cortina.

The jury could have found that the collision with the Oldsmobile caused a small fire on the rear of the Cortina, which was the size and shape of a grapefruit with a stream coming up from it and which, when the Rambler struck the Cortina, grew into a huge ball, enveloping the Cortina and the front of the Rambler. Almost instantaneously after the second collision the inside of the Cortina was engulfed in flames. Plaintiff suffered permanently disfiguring and disabling burns.

Plaintiff contends that design defects in the Cortina caused his injury. The fuel tank in the 1967 Cortina, like that in at least some other models manufactured by defendant, was 'dropped into' a hole in the floor of the trunk, the top of the fuel tank serving as a portion of the floor of the trunk. The only shield separating the fuel tank from the passenger compartment was a piece of cardboard. Other automobile manufacturers in the United States provided a trunk floor consisting of some kind of continuous metal panel which shielded the fuel tank from the passenger compartment, and after 1971 defendant itself abandoned the 'drop-in' fuel tank installation. In addition, the fule-filler pipe in the 1967 Cortina ran through the trunk compartment and was connected to the outer shell of the car by a rubber grommet and, the jury could have found, was so designed that it lacked flexibility, flexion at one end tending to pull the pipe loose. In at least some of the other types of cars defendant manufactured, it attached the flange of the fuel-filler pipe to the outer shell of the car by metal screws or bolts.

I. The Duty of the Manufacturer Under Illinois Law

Courts have differed on the issue of the liability of an automobile manufacturer for injuries to occupants of the automobile resulting from a collision not itself caused by any defects in the condition of the automobile, sometimes called the 'second collision' issue. ¹ The two leading cases are one in this court applying Indiana law, Evans v. General Motors Corp., 359 F.2d 822 (7th Cir. 1966), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 836, 87 S.Ct. 83, 17 L.Ed.2d 70 (1966), and one in the Eighth Circuit applying Minnesota law, Larsen v. General Motors Corp., 391 F.2d 495 (8th Cir. 1968). Evans, in which the court reasons that the intended use of an automobile does not include participation in collisions despite their foreseeability, holds that the manufacturer is not liable. Larsen, on the other hand, holds that since injury-producing impacts are foreseeable, the manufacturer has a duty so to design its vehicle that the user will not be subjected to an unreasonable risk of injury in the event of collision. We are, of course, not bound by Evans, because in this case the law of Illinois rather than Indiana is controlling.

The Illinois Supreme Court recently considered the Evans and Larsen cases and the divergent lines of cases following them in Mieher v. Brown, 54 Ill.2d 539, 301 N.E.2d 307 (1973). In the Mieher case the court held that the manufacturer of a truck was not liable for the death of the driver of an automobile that had run under the rear of the trunk bed, the truck having no rear bumper or shield to prevent such an occurrence. The controlling issue, in the words of the court, was 'whether the defendant and the decedent stood in such a relationship to one another that the law imposed upon the defendant an obligation of reasonable conduct for the benefit of the decedent'. (54 Ill.2d at 541, 301 N.E.2d at 308.) After analyzing the Evans and Larsen lines of cases, the court did not expressly adopt either view. Rather it distinguished those cases:

'The question in Larsen and Evans concerned the duty of the manufacturer to design a vehicle in which it was safe to ride. The question in our case involves the duty of the manufacturer to design a vehicle with which it is safe to collide.' (54 Ill.2d at 543, 301 N.E.2d at 309.)

In deciding that question, the court said, the controlling considerations are whether 'it appears to the court highly extraordinary that it (the defendant's conduct) should have brought about the harm,' ² and whether the defendant has created 'an unreasonable risk of injury' or 'an unreasonable danger.' ³ The court applied these tests to the accident before it and concluded that the alleged defective design did not create 'an unreasonable danger or an unreasonable risk of injury,' and that the manufacturer did not have a duty 'to design his vehicle so as to prevent injuries from the extraordinary occurrences of this case.' (54 Ill.2d at 545, 301 N.E.2d at 310.) Justice Goldenhersh, in dissent, disagreed with the court's result but said of the majority opinion:

'Upon a close reading of the opinion it appears to me that the majority recognize that the duty owed by the manufacturer is to design his vehicle so as to avoid the unreasonable risk of injury in the event of collision irrespective of whether the injured is within or without the particular vehicle, and insofar as the opinion so holds, I concur.'

The Illinois Supreme Court followed and applied Mieher v. Brown in Cunis v. Brennan, 56 Ill.2d 372, 308 N.E.2d 617 (1974), in which the plaintiff, when the automobile in which he was riding and another automobile collided, had been thrown approximately 30 feet to a parkway, where one of his legs was impaled on an object protruding from the ground. In holding that the municipality was not liable for permitting a dangerous condition to remain on the parkway, the court applied the 'unreasonable danger' test of Mieher and concluded that the municipality's duty did not extend to maintaining the parkway to guard against 'the remote possibility' of the 'tragically bizarre' and perhaps 'unique' occurrence for which the plaintiff sued. Again Justice Goldenhersh dissented.

Application of the principles stated in the Mieher and Cunis opinions requires affirmance here. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, it does not appear to us to be 'highly extraordinary' that the absence of a firewall or shield between the fuel tank and the passenger compartment and the condition of the filler-pipe assembly would bring about the harm for which plaintiff sues. The jury could have found that those conditions, in the words of the Mieher opinion, constituted an 'unreasonable danger' and subjected the user of the product to 'an unreasonable risk of injury.' A rear-end collision is the most common of highway mishaps, and it is not 'extraordinary,' 'bizarre,' 'unique,' or 'freakish and . . . fantastic' ⁴ for such a collision to impel the victim vehicle into a collision with a third vehicle. We believe the law of Illinois to be that when an automobile is so constructed that its occupants are subjected to an unreasonable risk of being severely injured if it becomes involved in an accident that is not of a highly extraordinary kind, the manufacturer is liable for resulting injuries to occupants of the automobile.

In what amounts to an argument that the circumstances of plaintiff's injury were extraordinary and therefore comparable to those in Mieher and Cunis, defendant assumes impact speeds of 20 or 25 miles per hour for the first impact and 40 or 45 for the second, applies the formula for determining kinetic energy to calculate the forces of the two impacts, and arrives at a total force which it says was approximately equivalent to the force that would have been received if the Cortina had been backed off the roof of the Marshall Field Building. The jury could have found, however, from testimony that the impact speeds were lower than defendant assumes ⁵ and the evidence that the only major injuries suffered by anyone involved in the collisions were plaintiff's burns, that lesser forces were involved. Indeed, it would be difficult for us to believe, if we were the trier of the facts, that a passenger in a car backed off the roof of the Marshall Field Building would suffer no major injury other than burns. Contrary to def...