Speller v. SEARS, ROEBUCK

• Decision Date: 06 May 2003
• Parties: ELIJAH SPELLER, by His Guardian, STACY MILLER, et al., Appellants, v. SEARS, ROEBUCK AND CO. et al., Respondents, et al., Defendants.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

100 N.Y.2d 38

790 N.E.2d 252

760 N.Y.S.2d 79

ELIJAH SPELLER, by His Guardian, STACY MILLER, et al., Appellants, v. SEARS, ROEBUCK AND CO. et al., Respondents, et al., Defendants.

Court of Appeals of the State of New York.

Argued March 25, 2003.

Decided May 6, 2003.

Renfroe & Quinn, Forest Hills (John E. Quinn of counsel), for appellants.

Leader & Berkon LLP, New York City (James K. Leader of counsel), and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, L.L.P., Columbia, South Carolina, for respondents.

Chief Judge KAYE and Judges SMITH, CIPARICK, WESLEY, ROSENBLATT and READ concur.

OPINION OF THE COURT

GRAFFEO, J.

In this products liability case, defendants—a product manufacturer and retailer—were granted summary judgment dismissing plaintiffs' complaint. Because we conclude that plaintiffs raised a triable issue of fact concerning whether a defective refrigerator caused the fire that resulted in plaintiffs' injuries, we reverse and reinstate the complaint against these defendants.

Plaintiffs' decedent Sandra Speller died in a house fire that also injured her seven-year-old son. It is undisputed that the fire originated in the kitchen. Plaintiffs commenced this action against Sears, Roebuck and Co., Whirlpool Corporation and the property owner alleging negligence, strict products liability and breach of warranty.¹ Relevant to this appeal, plaintiffs asserted that the fire was caused by defective wiring in the refrigerator, a product manufactured by Whirlpool and sold by Sears.

After discovery, defendants Sears and Whirlpool moved for summary judgment seeking dismissal of the complaint. Relying principally on a report issued by the New York City Fire Marshal, defendants rejected the refrigerator as the source of the fire, instead contending that a stovetop grease fire was the cause of the conflagration. Thus, they argued that their product was outside the chain of causation that resulted in plaintiffs' damages.

In opposition to defendants' motion for summary judgment, plaintiffs submitted excerpts from the depositions of two experts and an affidavit from a third, as well as other materials. Plaintiffs' experts refuted the conclusions reached in the Fire Marshal's report, opining that the fire started in the upper right quadrant of the refrigerator, an area with a concentration of electrical wiring. All three rejected the stove as the source of the fire. Plaintiffs also submitted portions of the deposition of a Whirlpool engineer retained as an expert by defendants. Although the engineer disputed that the fire originated in the refrigerator, he acknowledged that a fire would not occur in a refrigerator unless the product was defective. Supreme Court denied defendants' request for summary judgment, holding that plaintiffs' submissions raised a triable issue of fact as to whether the fire was caused by a defect in the refrigerator. The Appellate Division reversed and granted the motion, dismissing the complaint as against Sears and Whirlpool. The Court reasoned that defendants' evidence suggesting an alternative cause of the fire shifted the burden to plaintiffs to come forward with specific evidence of a defect. Characterizing the submissions of plaintiffs' experts as "equivocal," the Court concluded that plaintiffs failed to satisfy their burden of proof to withstand summary judgment. (294 AD2d 349, 350 [2002].) This Court granted plaintiffs leave to appeal.

A party injured as a result of a defective product may seek relief against the product manufacturer or others in the distribution chain if the defect was a substantial factor in causing the injury. "A product may be defective when it contains a manufacturing flaw, is defectively designed or is not accompanied by adequate warnings for the use of the product" (Liriano v Hobart Corp., 92 NY2d 232, 237 [1998]; Robinson v Reed-Prentice Div. of Package Mach. Co., 49 NY2d 471, 478 [1980]).

In this case, plaintiffs' theory was that the wiring in the upper right quadrant of the refrigerator was faulty, causing an electrical fire which then spread to other areas of the kitchen and residence. Because that part of the refrigerator had been consumed in the fire, plaintiffs noted that it was impossible to examine or test the wiring to determine the precise nature of the defect. Thus, plaintiffs sought to prove their claim circumstantially by establishing that the refrigerator caused the house fire and therefore did not perform as intended.

New York has long recognized the viability of this circumstantial approach in products liability cases. Indeed its origins can be traced back to Codling v Paglia (32 NY2d 330, 337 [1973]), where this Court stated that a plaintiff "is not required to prove the specific defect" and that "[p]roof of necessary facts may be circumstantial." In order to proceed in the absence of evidence identifying a specific flaw, a plaintiff must prove that the product did not perform as intended and exclude all other causes for the product's failure that are not attributable to defendants (Halloran v Virginia Chems., 41 NY2d 386, 388 [1977]; see generally Kreindler, Rodriguez, Beekman and Cook, New York Law of Torts § 16.64, at 519-522 [15 West's NY Prac Series 1997]). In this regard, New York law is consistent with the Restatement, which reads:

"It may be inferred that the harm sustained by the plaintiff was caused by a product defect existing at the time of sale or distribution, without proof of a specific defect, when the incident that harmed the plaintiff:

"(a) was of a kind that ordinarily occurs as a result of product defect; and

"(b) was not, in the particular case, solely the result of causes other than product defect existing at the time of sale or distribution" (Restatement [Third] of Torts: Products Liability § 3 [1998]).

Of course, if a plaintiff's proof is insufficient with respect to either prong of this circumstantial inquiry, a jury may not infer that the harm was caused by a defective product unless plaintiff offers competent evidence identifying a specific flaw (see Shelden v Hample Equip. Co., 59 NY2d 618 [1983],

affg 89 AD2d 766 [3d Dept 1982]).

Here, in their motion for summary judgment, defendants focused on the second prong of the circumstantial inquiry, offering evidence that the injuries were not caused by their product but by an entirely different instrumentality—a grease fire that began on top of the stove. This was the conclusion of the Fire Marshal who stated during deposition testimony that his opinion was based...