Spurlin v. General Motors Corp.

• Decision Date: 15 March 1976
• Docket Number: No. 74--3080,74--3080
• Citation: 528 F.2d 612
• Parties: A. A. SPURLIN, surviving parent of Douglas J. Spurlin, a minor, Deceased, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 612

528 F.2d 612

A. A. SPURLIN, surviving parent of Douglas J. Spurlin, a minor, Deceased, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 74--3080.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

March 15, 1976.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc

Denied May 10, 1976.

See 531 F.2d 279.

Francis H. Hare, Sr., Birmingham, Ala., Carey Walker, Jr., Harvey B. Morris, Huntsville, Ala., Truman Hobbs, Montgomery, Ala., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Jerry B. Ange, Ralph H. Ford, Huntsville, Ala., for defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Before TUTTLE, THORNBERRY and COLEMAN, Circuit Judges.

TUTTLE, Circuit Judge:

This diversity suit arises out of a school bus crash which occurred in Morgan County, Alabama, on April 23, 1968, when the bus's brakes failed. Two wrongful death suits and twenty-two personal injury actions were filed, on behalf of the children who were in the bus at the time, against the manufacturer of the school bus chassis, General Motors Corporation. Following consolidation of the cases for trial by the district court, ¹ a six-person jury heard evidence for approximately two weeks. The court then submitted the cases on the theory of alleged negligent design of the braking system, ² and the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs, awarding damages in the amount of $70,000 each in the wrongful death cases. The district court, however, granted defendant's post-trial motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and, in the alternative, a new trial, on the ground that the verdict was not supported by the evidence. This appeal followed. We consider the district court's two post-trial rulings in turn, beginning with its grant of General Motors' motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

I. CORRECTNESS OF THE DISTRICT COURT'S GRANT OF JUDGMENT NOTWITHSTANDING THE VERDICT.

A. The Standard of Review.

The applicable standard of review for judging the correctness of a district court's grant or denial of a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict was carefully delineated by this Court in Boeing Co. v. Shipman, 411 F.2d 365 (5th Cir. 1969) (en banc):

'On motions for directed verdict and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict the Court should consider all of the evidence--not just that evidence which supports the non-mover's case--but in the light and with all reasonable inferences most favorable to the party opposed to the motion. . . . (I)f there is substantial evidence opposed to the motions, that is, evidence of such quality and weight that reasonable and fair-minded men in the exercise of impartial judgment might reach different conclusions, the motions shall be denied, and the case submitted to the jury. . . . There must be a conflict on substantial evidence to create a jury question. However, it is the function of the jury as the traditional finder of the facts, and not the Court, to weigh conflicting evidence and inferences, and determine the credibility of witnesses.' 411 F.2d at 374--375 (footnotes omitted).

This test requires us to scrutinize the record carefully, considering all the evidence which was submitted to the jury for its consideration, but viewing it in the manner most favorable to the plaintiffs, as the parties opposed to the motion for judgment n.o.v. It is important to note at the outset, therefore, that defendant General Motors has not assigned, as separate grounds for cross-appeal, the commission of any errors by the district court in admitting into evidence any particular items or testimony given by any of the witnesses. This Court, therefore, is not required to consider the issue of the scope of the evidence which was properly before the jury in reaching its verdict, but is free to examine and rely upon all the evidence which the district court charged the jury it could consider in deciding the case.

B. Plaintiffs' Theory of Recovery.

Briefly stated, the theory upon which the cases were submitted to the jury was one of alleged negligent design of the bus's braking system by General Motors, coupled with a failure to warn of the unique problems and need for frequent servicing and maintenance associated with operating school buses. Specifically, the plaintiffs contended that the braking system with which the 1965 66-passenger school bus at issue was equipped was not reasonably safe for the use for which it was intended in that: (1) the single hydraulic braking system on the bus was a dangerous system because of the inevitability of total failure of braking power in the event of a loss of brake fluid through undetected leakage; (2) there was no effective emergency brake on the bus, only a parking brake which was not intended to stop a loaded, moving vehicle such as this one; and (3) there was no warning device of any sort, such as a gauge or warning light, to indicate when the brake fluid in the reservoir was running low. Furthermore, the plaintiffs alleged, the owner's manual which came with the bus suggested brake fluid level checks only every 6,000 miles, which on a school bus would be only once a year, whereas safe maintenance practices would actually require checking the brake fluid in such a vehicle every two weeks to a month.

C. Sufficiency of the Evidence Under the Boeing Co. Test.

In charging the jury, the district court clearly and correctly outlined the four elements necessary for recovery in a negligence action: (1) the existence of a duty on the part of the defendant; (2) a breach of that duty; (3) the existence of a causal relationship between the defendant's conduct and the plaintiff's injury; and (4) resulting injury to the plaintiff. Ward v. Hobart Manufacturing Co., 450 F.2d 1176 (5th Cir. 1971). Since the existence of the final element was in effect uncontested in any of the consolidated cases, and since the existence and nature of the scope of the duty owed by a particular defendant is a question of law for the court, 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 neither side has asserted that the district court erred in defining GM's duty in this case, we find it necessary to examine the sufficiency of the evidence introduced at trial only with respect to the second and third elements of the plaintiffs' cause of action.

1. The Breach of Duty Issue.

The district court instructed the jury that General Motors, as an automotive manufacturer, had a duty to design and build a bus chassis reasonably fit for the purpose for which it was made, without hidden or latent defects which would make it 'imminently and inherently dangerous' to persons using it. The defendant was required to exercise reasonable care in the adoption of a safe plan or design, the court charged the jury, and the standard by which its conduct was to be judged was that of a 'reasonably prudent manufacturer of school bus chassis in 1965.'

Given this definition of the defendant's duty, the jury was then in effect required to decide whether the braking system used on the bus at issue was 'imminently' or 'inherently' dangerous so as to render the vehicle unsafe for its intended use, keeping in mind the state of the art in the automotive industry in 1965 and the extent to which alternative braking systems which were reasonably safe were available. While it is unnecessary to catalogue in detail the evidence presented on these issues at trial, a brief summary of the mechanics involved in the braking system in use on this particular bus, and the testimony offered by witnesses on both sides regarding its safety will serve to support our holding that there was sufficient 'substantial evidence' as required by Boeing Co. v. Shipman, supra, for the jury to have found that the braking system on the bus was not reasonably safe and consequently that GM had breached its duty as a manufacturer.

The bus which crashed was a 1965 66-passenger school bus, the chassis portion of which was designed and built by General Motors. It was equipped with a single hydraulic braking system, containing a single reservoir in the master cylinder supplying all of the brake fluid which transmits pressure to the brake cylinders on each wheel. In such a system, a leak which exhausts the brake fluid in the reservoir causes a sudden and total failure of braking ability, as happened in this case. A dual hydraulic braking system, on the other hand, is equipped with two brake fluid reservoirs, each of which services the brake cylinders on two separate wheels, so that in the event of loss of fluid from one of the reservoirs, whether from leakage or some other cause, the vehicle continues to have braking power on the wheels serviced by the other reservoir. The only other braking mechanism with which the bus in this case was equipped was a parking brake, which by the admission of all those who testified at the trial was never intended to function as an emergency brake.

We find that the evidence offered at trial on the safety of the braking system as described above was more than sufficient to withstand a motion for judgment n.o.v. under the test set out in Boeing. Although a GM Senior Design Engineer, Paul Fisher, testified that he considered a dual hydraulic braking system to be less reliable than a single system (because of the existence of more parts and consequently a greater possibility that one of them could malfunction), the plaintiffs put on expert testimony that the single hydraulic braking system in use on the bus at issue was not reasonably safe for the purpose for which it was intended. Both of plaintiffs' expert witnesses, Professor Milton Koenig, a professor of mechanical engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit, and Dr. Leslie W. Ball, Director of Safety at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, were found by the district court to be qualified to give expert opinions on the braking design issues on...