Uitts v. General Motors Corp.

• Decision Date: 19 August 1974
• Docket Number: 72-1485.,Civ. A. No. 72-150
• Citation: 411 F. Supp. 1380
• Parties: Clayton Ralph UITTS and Elva E. Uitts v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION. Elva E. UITTS, Co-Administratrix of the Estate of Mary Alice Hollingsworth, Deceased v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

411 F. Supp. 1380

Clayton Ralph UITTS and Elva E. Uitts v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.

Elva E. UITTS, Co-Administratrix of the Estate of Mary Alice Hollingsworth, Deceased v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.

Civ. A. Nos. 72-150, 72-1485.

United States District Court, E. D. Pennsylvania.

August 19, 1974.

Theodore R. Mann, Barry E. Ungar, Philadelphia, Pa., for plaintiffs.

George J. Lavin, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM

HUYETT, District Judge.

Plaintiffs in this products liability action arising out of an automobile accident seek a new trial. The matter was tried before a jury which returned a verdict for the defendant. For the reasons which follow plaintiffs' motion for a new trial is DENIED.

At the trial plaintiffs contended that defendant was liable under the Restatement of Torts (Second) § 402A for defective design, manufacturing, testing, inspection or assembly of the vehicle, a Chevrolet K-10 Carry-all Blazer. Plaintiffs did not allege a specific defect but rather relied upon the theory enunciated in MacDougall v. Ford Motor Co., 214 Pa.Super. 384, 257 A.2d 676 (1969), which held that "the occurrence of a malfunction of machinery, in the absence of abnormal use and reasonable secondary causes is evidence of a defective condition within the meaning of § 402A." Plaintiff Elva Uitts testified that in August, 1970 she was operating her son's vehicle which she alleges went out of control without any warning, swerving sharply to the left across the highway, crashing into an embankment.

Plaintiffs allege several grounds for a new trial.

Plaintiffs first contend that we erred in excluding from evidence certain reports of defendant, General Motors Corporation. At trial plaintiffs sought to enter into evidence certain reports (known as "1241 Reports") produced by defendant in response to a court order requiring production. These reports concerned incidents which involved identical or substantially similar vehicles which allegedly veered to the left or to the right. While admittedly these reports contain hearsay, plaintiffs seek to admit them under the business records exception to the hearsay rule. Plaintiffs claim these reports are relevant as evidence of substantially similar accidents of similar products which corroborate plaintiffs' claim that the accident resulted from a malfunction of the vehicle. Briefs were submitted by the parties at trial and the issue was argued extensively at that time. After careful consideration we ruled that the reports were not admissible.

Plaintiffs contend that these reports are admissible under the federal¹ or state² business records act and under the authority of Pekelis v. Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc., 187 F.2d 122 (2d Cir. 1951). In Pekelis the court held that an accident report compiled by defendant comprised a business record and could be used at trial by plaintiff. The accident report however, concerned the accident which was the subject of the litigation and involved an airplane crash, not an auto crash. The report in Pekelis was the result of a long and detailed process undertaken by defendant expressly for the purpose of determining the cause of the airplane crash. The procedure for the investigation was established by the defendant and involved various steps of investigation culminating in a final report as to the cause of the accident. The list of persons involved in the investigation clearly demonstrates the significance attached by the corporation to the process. Considering these factors it is apparent that the inherent reliability, which is the basis for the business records exception, is present in the Pekelis accident report.

The reports offered in the present case do not have this indicia of reliability. They include statements by owners concerning the occurrence of an accident and reports by General Motors personnel concerning inspection of the involved vehicle, when possible. In addition, some of the reports contain letters of owners and police reports. The 1241 reports offered by plaintiffs were not the result of a continued and detailed investigation, but rather served merely as a preliminary investigation involving only the taking of a statement from the driver and if possible an inspection of the vehicle in question. The persons compiling these reports were not required to assemble all the factual data, or determine the cause or extent of the damage. They were charged with merely reporting the statements of the owners without any duty to cross examine or investigate further. The purpose of these reports was to alert defendant to possible difficulties with its product. They were not intended to commit the defendant in any way and as such were not intended to be final or amount to a complete analysis of a particular accident or its cause, as was the report in Pekelis.

Even if we were to decide that the reports did contain sufficient reliability for admission into evidence, we would also have to find that the reports are relevant and probative of the issue of causation. In Pekelis the report which was ruled admissible concerned the accident which was the subject of the litigation. The 1241 reports offered in the present case concerned accidents other than the one which is being adjudicated. Clearly, an investigation into the cause of the very accident being litigated, as in Pekelis, would be relevant. The same result, however, does not obtain when the reports sought to be introduced relate to other accidents the cause of which may or may not have already been litigated. A review of these reports shows that various malfunctions were alleged to have caused the accident.³ Because of the nature of the reports we do not believe them to be admissions by the defendant, and therefore to permit them to be considered by the jury would be tantamount to allowing the persons making the statements to testify against defendant without being subject to cross examination or required to take an oath. Therefore, any probative value these reports might have is outweighed by their prejudicial nature.

Proof of prior accidents or occurrences are not easily admitted into evidence, since they can often result in unfair prejudice, consumption of time and distraction of the jury to collateral matters. See McCormick on Evidence, § 200 (2d ed. 1972); United States v. Kearney, 136 U.S.App.D.C. 328, 402 F.2d 170 (1969). The introduction of these reports into evidence in this case would have had this very result. Plaintiffs sought to enter thirty-five of these reports into the record. In an earlier Memorandum and Order in this case, Uitts v. General Motors Corp., 58 F.R.D. 450, 452 (E.D.Pa. 1972), we held that for purposes of discovery, "similar accidents with identical equipment are relevant to the determination of causation." With respect to these reports plaintiff is attempting to introduce proof of accidents involving similar, not necessarily identical, vehicles. An examination of these reports reveals that some of them contain either highly inflammatory letters of owners or police reports relating to details of the accidents, which would clearly be inadmissible. Plaintiffs made no attempt to limit or delete the hearsay portions of these reports.⁴ Rather, plaintiffs insisted that each of the reports without exception be admitted into evidence. Defendant, in order to minimize the prejudicial effect of these reports, would have had to go through each one individually with the jury. The result would have been a mini-trial on each of the thirty-five reports offered by plaintiffs. This would lengthen the trial considerably and the minds of the jurors would be diverted from the claim of the plaintiffs to the claims contained in these reports. Plaintiffs chose not to attempt to prove a specific malfunction or defect of the vehicle, but rather, to rely upon the MacDougall theory to establish liability. The effect of MacDougall is to lessen plaintiffs' burden of proof by allowing plaintiffs to establish a prima facie case merely by showing the occurrence of a malfunction in the absence of abnormal use and reasonable secondary causes. This lower burden of proof, however, does not result in a lower standard of admissibility under the rules of evidence. If plaintiffs were attempting to prove the existence of a specific defect or malfunction it is clear that the admission into evidence of the occurrence of similar accidents would require a showing that those accidents were caused by the same malfunction or defect. Simply because plaintiffs are proceeding under the MacDougall theory we do not believe they can introduce evidence of accidents which may involve a variety of causes, and then let the jury guess which of those causes was responsible for the accident in the present case. Since these reports are being introduced by plaintiffs merely to corroborate the testimony of Elva Uitts we believe the prejudicial nature of them far outweighs any probative value they might have, and accordingly we do not think it was error to exclude them from the record.

Plaintiffs next contend that we erred in unduly limiting the cross examination of the defendant's witness, Dr. Helmuth Engelman. Dr. Engelman was head of the Highway Accident Research Team of Ohio State University which was under contract with the United States Department of Transportation to perform independent multidisciplinary accident investigations. Such an investigation was performed in this case. On direct examination Dr. Engelman concluded, based on his study and report,...