Turcotte v. Ford Motor Company

• Decision Date: 13 February 1974
• Docket Number: No. 73-1251.,73-1251.
• Citation: 494 F.2d 173
• Parties: Robert L. TURCOTTE, Administrator of the Estate of Gerard P. Turcotte, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

494 F.2d 173 (1974)

Robert L. TURCOTTE, Administrator of the Estate of Gerard P. Turcotte, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 73-1251.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Argued October 3, 1973.

Decided February 13, 1974.

On Rehearing April 8, 1974.

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Paul V. Reynolds, Providence, R. I., for defendant-appellant.

John F. Dolan, Providence, R. I., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, McENTEE, Circuit Judge, and MOORE,^* Senior Circuit Judge.

McENTEE, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff, a Rhode Island citizen, filed this diversity suit in the United States District Court for Rhode Island, seeking to recover for the alleged wrongful death of his son. The decedent was a passenger in a 1970 Maverick, manufactured by defendant Ford Motor Company, when the car was struck by another car on the Massachusetts Turnpike near Millbury, Massachusetts and burst into flames. Decedent died in the fire. The owner of the Maverick was William J. Sullivan of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, who purchased it from Menard Ford Sales, Inc., of South Bellingham, Massachusetts. The driver was Sullivan's son Michael. The operator of the other vehicle was a Massachusetts citizen.

At trial, plaintiff contended that Ford's positioning of the gas tank in the 1970 Maverick in such manner that the tank's top also served as the floor of the trunk constituted a defect in design which caused his son's death by fire. Plaintiff did not argue that the alleged defect caused the collision. Instead, he contended that, upon collision, a properly-designed Maverick would not have burst into flames and that his son would otherwise have survived the initial impact. The case went to the jury on the theory of strict liability, and a verdict was returned for plaintiff in the amount of $500,000.¹ The trial court entered judgment for that amount plus $61,315.08 in interest. Ford's motions for new trial and for alteration or amendment of the judgment were both denied. This appeal is based on a variety of issues.

I. Conflict of Laws

The threshold issue is whether the trial court correctly decided that Rhode Island's wrongful death statute and its law on strict liability govern the instant case. Ford, a Delaware corporation, contends that Massachusetts law should have controlled. Applying the conflict of laws rules of Rhode Island, the forum state, see Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Elec. Mfg. Co., 313 U.S. 487, 496, 61 S.Ct. 1020, 85 L.Ed. 1477 (1941), we hold that Rhode Island law was properly invoked on both questions.

Rhode Island has abandoned the old lex loci delicti theory of conflict of laws, in which the law of the place of the tort governed, in favor of a modern "interest-weighing" approach. Woodward v. Stewart, 104 R.I. 290, 299, 243 A.2d 917, 923, petition for cert. dismissed, 393 U.S. 957, 89 S.Ct. 387, 21 L. Ed.2d 371 (1968). The Supreme Court of Rhode Island has summarized the interests it will consider under this new approach in a five-point guideline:

(1) Predictability of results.

(2) Maintenance of interstate order.

(3) Simplification of the judicial task.

(4) Advancement of the forum\'s governmental interests.

(5) Application of the better rule of law.

Woodward v. Stewart, supra at 299-300, 243 A.2d at 923; see Leflar, Choice-Influencing Considerations in Conflicts Law, 41 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 267 (1966).² We will consider these interests separately with respect to, first, the appropriate wrongful death statute and, second, the appropriate tort law.³

Plaintiff brought this suit under the Rhode Island wrongful death statute, Gen.Laws of R.I. § 10-7-1 (1956) as amended, which measures damages by a quasi-compensatory standard with no ceiling on recovery. See D'Ambra v. United States, 481 F.2d 14, 19 (1st Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1075, 94 S.Ct. 592, 38 L.Ed.2d 482 (1973) (finding Rhode Island statute "partly punitive"). In contrast, the Massachusetts wrongful death statute, Mass.Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 229, § 2 (Supp.1973), measures damages by a purely punitive standard, i. e., solely by the degree of defendant's culpability rather than plaintiff's actual loss. Also, at the time of this collision recovery was limited to $50,000.⁴ See Tiernan v. Westext Transp., Inc., 295 F.Supp. 1256, 1263 (D.R.I.1969). Application of the Massachusetts statute would thus preclude the $500,000 judgment entered for the plaintiff.⁵

Applying the Rhode Island interest-weighing approach to this conflict of laws, we find that the fourth factor listed above, advancement of the forum's governmental interests, strongly points towards the Rhode Island wrongful death statute as more appropriate in the instant case. Rhode Island's interest here is in seeing that plaintiff, its citizen, is adequately compensated for a wrongful death. While of course the forum has some interest in protecting its citizens in any situation, such interest is particularly compelling in a tort case involving substantial personal injury or death because failure there to provide adequate compensation could mean that the plaintiffs will later become burdens on the state. See Tiernan v. Westext Transp., Inc., supra at 1264. In the instant case, this Rhode Island interest would plainly be defeated if recovery were limited to $50,000 under the Massachusetts statute. The jury found actual loss of $500,000.

Moreover, consideration of Rhode Island's interest in maintaining interstate order does not indicate contrary application of the Massachusetts statute. Under this heading, Rhode Island courts inquire whether another state's law and policy would be "offended" by application of Rhode Island law. See Brown v. Church of the Holy Name of Jesus, supra, 105 R.I. at 329, 252 A. 2d at 180. Ford is not a Massachusetts corporation. Therefore, Massachusetts does not have as immediate an interest in making available the $50,000 recovery limitation in its statute as it would if defendant were a Massachusetts citizen. Similarly, in view of the fact that the conduct allegedly causing the injury, the design of the Maverick, occurred outside of Massachusetts, the punitive aspect of the Massachusetts wrongful death statute is of marginal relevance here. On the other hand, Massachusetts may have an interest in protecting noncitizen businesses, such as Ford, from unlimited wrongful death liability as a means of encouraging these businesses to continue operating in the state, providing local jobs and tax revenues. We first note in response to this interest that the existence of unlimited wrongful death liability in Rhode Island has not deterred Ford from continuing to supply automobile dealerships in that state. But in any event, we find that the Massachusetts interest in encouraging noncitizen business enterprises is weak in the instant case when compared to the Rhode Island interest in protecting its citizens from uncompensated harm.

The remaining three interests considered under the Rhode Island conflicts approach are either inconclusive or point to Rhode Island's statute.⁶ Therefore, we hold that Rhode Island's wrongful death statute properly governed the measure of damages in the instant case.

With regard to choice of appropriate strict liability law, we note first that it is somewhat unclear whether a conflict of laws in fact exists between Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Massachusetts courts apparently have never expressly adopted, or rejected, the doctrine of strict products liability. In the absence of relevant case law, the trial court and the parties proceeded on the arguendo assumption that strict liability would not be a permissible basis for recovery in Massachusetts.⁷ In contrast, Rhode Island has expressly adopted this doctrine. Ritter v. Narragansett Elec. Co., 109 R.I. 176, 187, 283 A.2d 255, 261 (1971). Moreover, the trial court in the instant case held that, if presented with the issue, the Supreme Court of Rhode Island would interpret that doctrine as authorizing liability where defects in the design of an automobile do not cause a collision but rather exacerbate the injuries resulting therefrom. The court thus found a true conflict of laws between Massachusetts and Rhode Island on strict liability which the court resolved in favor of Rhode Island law. Reviewing this second conflicts decision, we, too, will assume arguendo that Massachusetts would not recognize strict products liability in any form. To resolve the conflict, we again apply Rhode Island's interest-weighing approach.

Clearly Rhode Island has a significant governmental interest to advance by applying its own law on strict liability rather than the law of Massachusetts which denies recovery on that theory. Rhode Island's interest is the protection of its citizens from defective products. Such citizens include plaintiff, his son, and Sullivan, the purchaser of the Maverick. Application of Massachusetts law would plainly defeat this Rhode Island interest.

At the same time, application of Rhode Island law would not appear to offend Massachusetts law and policy. We again note that Ford is not a Massachusetts corporation. Thus, even if we assume that Massachusetts' failure to adopt strict products liability represents an intention to protect that state's manufacturers from excessive liability, Ford is outside of the protected class. Even if we assume a Massachusetts interest in encouraging noncitizen manufacturers to sell their products in the state, such interest is insubstantial when the product here was sold to a Rhode Island citizen and another Rhode Island citizen allegedly died as a result of a defect in it. Massachusetts' undeniable interest in controlling driving behavior on its highways —a factor which caused the Supreme Court of Rhode Island to apply Massachusetts negligence law to a Massachusetts collision in the Woodward case, supra, 104 R.I. at 300-301, 243 A. 2d at 923-924—is also not a significant consideration here. Where plaintiff...