Riley v. Ford Motor Co.
| Decision Date | 05 February 2014 |
| Docket Number | Appellate Case No. 2012-207489,Opinion No. 5195 |
| Court | South Carolina Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Laura Riley, as the Personal Representative of the Estate of Benjamin Riley, Respondent, v. Ford Motor Company, Appellant. |
Appeal From Bamberg County
Doyet A. Early, III, Circuit Court Judge
AFFIRMED IN PART AND REVERSED IN PART
Curtis Lyman Ott and Laura Watkins Jordan, both of Gallivan, White & Boyd, PA, of Columbia; Joseph Kenneth Carter, Jr., Carmelo Barone Sammataro, and David Christopher Marshall, all of Turner Padget Graham & Laney, PA, of Columbia, for Appellant.
Ronnie Lanier Crosby, of Hampton, and Daniel E. Henderson and Matthew Vernon Creech, of Ridgeland, all of Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth & Detrick, PA, for Respondent.
Jasper County Sheriff Benjamin Riley's estate ("the Estate") brought this products liability lawsuit against Ford Motor Company after Riley was ejected from his 1998 Ford F-150 pickup truck in an accident and killed. The Estatesettled with the at-fault driver before trial, and the jury awarded $300,000 against Ford. We affirm the trial court's denial of Ford's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV). However, we reverse the denial of Ford's motion for setoff and the granting of the Estate's motion for new trial nisi additur.
On August 29, 2007, Riley was driving his Ford F-150 pickup truck near Ehrhardt in Bamberg County when a vehicle driven by Andrew Marshall Carter II pulled from a side road into Riley's lane of travel. The resulting impact caused Riley's truck to leave the road and roll over. The driver's door of the truck opened in the initial collision with Carter, and Riley was ejected through the open door. First responders found Riley's body eighty-five feet from where he was ejected.
Riley's wife Laura, serving as personal representative of the Estate, brought wrongful death and survival claims against Ford and Carter. The claims against Ford were based on a products liability negligence theory. Specifically, the Estate alleged Ford's negligent design of the door-latch system in Riley's truck allowed the door to come open, and Riley would not have died if he had not been ejected. The Estate settled with Carter for $25,000, with the Estate and Carter agreeing to allocate $20,000 to the survival claim and $5,000 to the wrongful death claim. The trial court approved the settlement.
At trial, the Estate withdrew its survival claim, and the court submitted the wrongful death claim against Ford to the jury. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the Estate for $300,000 in actual damages.
Ford moved for JNOV, arguing the Estate failed to prove both the existence of a defect in the door-latch system and a reasonable alternative design. Ford also requested a setoff from the verdict in the amount of $25,000 to account for the Estate's settlement with Carter. The trial court denied both motions in a form order without explanation.
The Estate filed a motion seeking a new trial nisi additur. At the hearing on the motion, the trial court stated that a "$300,000 [verdict] for this type of case could very well be found to be shockingly inadequate" "because of the stature of [Riley] and what he's done in life, what he's contributed to his family." The trial court granted the motion and ordered Ford to pay "an additional $600,000 in actual damages . . . , bringing the total verdict to $900,000." Ford appeals each of these three rulings.
Ford raises in its brief three arguments as to why the trial court erred in not granting Ford's motion for JNOV: (1) the Estate did not present sufficient evidence of a design defect, but relied on the "mere failure" of the door latch; (2) the Estate did not prove the existence of a reasonable alternative design as required by Branham v. Ford Motor Co., 390 S.C. 203, 220, 701 S.E.2d 5, 14 (2010); and (3) the Estate did not present adequate expert testimony to prove a design flaw or a reasonable alternative design.1 At oral argument, Ford presented more detail for its argument that the Estate did not satisfy the requirements of Branham. We hold the trial court correctly denied Ford's motion for JNOV.
We begin by addressing Ford's argument that the Estate did not satisfy the requirements of Branham. In Branham, the supreme court noted that "South Carolina . . . [has] traditionally employed two tests to determine whether a product was unreasonably dangerous as a result of a design defect: (1) the consumer expectations test and (2) the risk-utility test." 390 S.C. at 218, 701 S.E.2d at 13. The court held, however, that "the consumer expectations test . . . is ill-suited in design defect cases," 390 S.C. at 220, 701 S.E.2d at 14, and adopted the risk-utility test as "the exclusive test in a products liability design case." Id. The court held that to satisfy the risk-utility test, a plaintiff must meet the "requirement of showing a feasible alternative design." Id. The court explained the requirement: 390 S.C. at 223, 701 S.E.2d at 16. Summarizing its holding, the court stated:
[I]n a product liability design defect action, the plaintiff must present evidence of a reasonable alternative design. The plaintiff will be required to point to a design flaw in the product and show how his alternative design would have prevented the product from being unreasonably dangerous. This presentation of an alternative design must include consideration of the costs, safety and functionality associated with the alternative design.
390 S.C. at 225, 701 S.E.2d at 16.
We find the Estate met the requirements of Branham by presenting evidence of Ford's own alternative design for a door-latch system, which Ford used in F-150 trucks manufactured before Riley's 1998 model, and which Ford originally incorporated into the design of the 1998 model.
To explain our finding that the Estate met the requirements of Branham, we first describe the mechanics of two door-latch systems—the rod-linkage system and the cable-linkage system. Riley's 1998 F-150—which Ford internally called the PN96—contained a rod-linkage door-latch system. According to the evidence presented in this case, a rod-linkage system contains a metal rod that connects the door handle to a latch. When a person pulls the door handle, the rod activates the latch, which causes the door to open. The type of rod-linkage system in Riley's PN96 is a compression rod system, in which the action of pulling the door handle pushes the rod, or "compresses" it, to activate the latch and cause the truck door to open. The Estate presented evidence that when a vehicle containing a compression rod system is involved in a frontal collision such as this one, the force of the collision may cause "foreshortening"—a decrease in the distance between the handle and the latch,2 which in turn compresses the rod as though a person pulled the handle. When a certain amount of foreshortening occurs, the rod may activate the latch and allow the door to open without the handle being pulled.
The Estate presented evidence that at the time Ford manufactured the PN96, Ford was also using a different door-latch system in other models—the cable-linkage system. As the Estate's mechanical engineering expert, Andrew Gilberg, explained, "you can't push on a cable and cause the latch to release." For thisreason, the cable-linkage system prevents the effects of foreshortening during collisions—doors opening without a person pulling the handle. According to Ford witnesses and internal documents, Ford originally designed the PN96 to contain a cable-linkage system.
Gilberg testified the door latch on Riley's PN96 activated during the collision due to foreshortening, which allowed the door to open. According to Ford's own internal documents, the compression rod system in a PN96 allowed the door latch to activate with only 12 millimeters of foreshortening. Gilberg testified he was "100 percent confident that the latch reached the trigger point" and allowed the door to open during the crash. Although Gilberg measured the post-crash foreshortening in Riley's PN96 to be 11.58 millimeters, he explained that the elasticity of the "all steel structure[]" of the truck caused "spring-back" after the collision, which made the post-crash measurement less than what it actually was when the crash occurred.
According to Gilberg's testimony, the cable-linkage system was a safer design and had "[n]o safety risks associated with [it]." Gilberg testified the cable system "was clearly more crashworthy" and prevented "unwanted door opening due to foreshortening" in frontal collisions. Ford's own internal documents established that it knew compression rod systems "have a tendency to unlatch during crash if doors are crushed beyond a certain limit," and cable systems "provide a solution to this problem." In 1989, Ford conducted two frontal crash tests on F-150s that had rod-linkage systems, and the test results indicated that doors opened upon impact. Gilberg testified this occurred due to "compression of the door—the same thing that opened the door in Sheriff Riley's vehicle." Based on these crash test results, the Estate asserted Ford installed a cable system in the 1992-1995 F-series instead of the rod system because the cable system prevented the effects of foreshortening and the resulting "unwanted door opening" in frontal collisions. Ford continued to crash test the F-series trucks once the cable systems were installed, and the results showed no doors opened due to foreshortening.
Despite the safety advantages associated with cable systems, Ford changed its original design for a cable-linkage system in the PN96 and...
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