Victorson v. Bock Laundry Mach. Co.

• Decision Date: 02 July 1975
• Citation: 373 N.Y.S.2d 39,335 N.E.2d 275,37 N.Y.2d 395
• Parties: , 335 N.E.2d 275, 91 A.L.R.3d 445 Livia VICTORSON et al., Respondent, v. BOCK LAUNDRY MACHINE COMPANY, Appellant, and Stanley S. Kaplan, doing business as Progressive Coin Meter Co., Respondent, et al., Defendants. Gwendolyn BROWN, an infant, by her mother and natural guardian, Ann Brown, et al., Respondents, v. 1580 ST. JOHN'S PLACE, INC., et al., Defendants, Bock Laundry Machine Co., Inc., Appellant-Respondent, and H. Greenwald, Inc., Appellant. Alberto RIVERA, Sr., et al., Respondents, v. BERKELEY SUPER WASH, INC., et al., Defendants, and Bock Laundry Machine Co., Defendant-Appellant and Third-Party Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 39

373 N.Y.S.2d 39

37 N.Y.2d 395, 335 N.E.2d 275, 91

A.L.R.3d 445

Livia VICTORSON et al., Respondent, v. BOCK LAUNDRY MACHINE COMPANY, Appellant, and Stanley S.

Kaplan, doing business as Progressive Coin Meter

Co., Respondent, et al., Defendants.

Gwendolyn BROWN, an infant, by her mother and natural guardian, Ann Brown, et al., Respondents, v. 1580 ST. JOHN'S PLACE, INC., et al., Defendants, Bock

Laundry Machine Co., Inc., Appellant-Respondent,

and H. Greenwald, Inc., Appellant.

Alberto RIVERA, Sr., et al., Respondents, v. BERKELEY SUPER WASH, INC., et al., Defendants, and Bock

Laundry Machine Co., Defendant-Appellant and

Third-Party Defendant-Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

July 2, 1975.

James J. Sentner, Jr., New York City, for appellant in the first above-entitled action.

Herbert L. Fine, New York City, for Livia Victorson and another, respondents in the first above-entitled action.

Leo Rothbard and Benjamin E. Gelerman, Brooklyn, for Stanley Kaplan, respondent in the first above-entitled action.

Joseph D. Ahearn and Daniel J. Coughlin, New York City, for H. Greenwald, Inc., appellant in the second above-entitled action.

Herbert Dicker, New York City, for Bock Laundry Machine Co., Inc., appellant-respondent in the second above-entitled action.

Jerome Cooper, Jamaica, for respondents in the second above-entitled action.

Sidney A. Schwartz and Irwin H. Haut, New York City, for defendant-appellant and third-party defendant-appellant in the third above-entitled action.

Martin Levine and Joseph Friedberg, New York City, for respondents in the third above-entitled action.

JONES, Judge.

These three cases arise out of claims asserted against the manufacturer of allegedly defective products by remote users; the theory of liability is that which we have called strict products liability (Codling v. Paglia, 32 N.Y.2d 330, 345 N.Y.S.2d 461, 298 N.E.2d 622). We now hold that the period of limitation with respect to these claims begins to run at the date of injury and that the duration of such period is that found in CPLR 214 (subds. 4, 5) under which there is a limitation of three years in actions for personal injury and property damages. (See 1 Weinstein-Korn-Miller, N.Y.Civ.Prac., pars. 214.13, 214.14, 214.15.) Accordingly, our court's holding to the contrary in Mendel v. Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., 25 N.Y.2d 340, 305 N.Y.S.2d 490, 253 N.E.2d 207, must be overruled. ¹ Defendant Bock Laundry Machine Company manufactured and marketed a centrifuge extractor for use in apartment house laundry rooms and commercial laundromats to spin water out of laundry after washing and preparatory to its being placed in a dryer. In Victorson the extractor was sold in 1948 and the injury occurred in 1969; in Rivera the sale was in 1959, the injury in 1967; and in Brown the sale was in 1955 and the injury in 1965. The Appellate Divisions have properly unraveled the procedural complexities, presenting for our determination, on motions addressed to the pleadings, the questions as to when the Statute of Limitations began to run and for what period it continued.

Preliminarily we ovserve as a matter of analysis that, while one seeking to recover from a manufacturer for injuries sustained in consequence of an alleged defe in its product may be said to have but a single claim, that claim may be grounded in one or more of four causes of action or theories of liability. Depending on the factual context in which the claim arises, the injured plaintiff, and those asserting derivative claims, may state a cause of action in contract, express or implied, on the ground of negligence, or, as here, on the theory of strict products liability. In these cases now before us we are concerned only with claims based on the last theory. What we say here, therefore, should not be understood as in any way referring to the liability of a manufacturer of a defective product under familiar but different doctrines of the law of contracts for injuries sustained by a customer or other person with whom or for whose benefit the manufacturer previously has made a warranty or other agreement, express or implied. As inidcated, it express or implied. As indicated, it plaintiff to base his case on contract liability or negligence or strict products liability, or on some combination thereof.

Some consideration of the theory of strict products liability is of assistance in the selection of the applicable Statute of Limitations. We acknowledge that for some years there has been a lively discussion as to whether this form of liability sounds in tort or in contract.

Initially we recognize the general distinction between these two areas of the law. 'The fundamental difference between tort and contract lies in the nature of the interests protected. Tort actions are created to protect the interest in freedom from various kinds of harm. The duties of conduct which give rise to them are imposed by the law, and are based primarily upon social policy, and not necessarily upon the will or intention of the parties.' (Prosser, Torts (4th ed.), § 92, p. 613.)

The development of what we now call the doctrine of strict products liability has been both tortuous and spasmodic (Codling v. Paglia supra; Goldberg v. Kollsman Instrument Corp., 12 N.Y.2d 432, 240 N.Y.S.2d 592, 191 N.E.2d 81; see discussion in Mendel v. Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., supra, dissenting opn., 25 N.Y.2d p. 346 Et seq., 305 N.Y.S.2d p. 495 Et seq., 253 N.E.2d p. 210 Et seq.). In reaching and articulating our decision in Codling, we neither created nor discovered a new cause of action. On the contrary, in extending the remedy to plaintiffs who were neither buyers nor users of the product, we recognized in its modern guise a pre-existing theory of liability which had been evolving and maturing over the years, sometimes having been described by use of the phrase 'breach of implied warranty'.

In a simplistic sense it is obvious that this liability does not arise out of contract concepts if such concepts be thought of as the means for analyzing the jural relationship between two parties who have entered into a contractual relationship prior to the date on which injury is sustained. Here none of these plaintiffs had had any association with the manufacturer of the centrifuge extractors prior to being injured. Nor are these claims grounded in any contention that the liability of the manufacturer stems from its nonperformance of an obligation to plaintiffs arising out of an agreement, express or implied. Rather than arising out of the 'will or intention of the parties', the liability imposed on the manufacturer under strict products liability, whether it be to purchaser, user, or innocent bystander, is predicated largely on considerations of sound social policy (Codling v. Paglia, supra, 32 N.Y.2d pp. 340--341, 345 N.Y.S.2d pp. 467--468, 298 N.E.2d p. 627).

That in the emerging growth and development of the law of liability in these matters, in the best traditions of the common law, it has from time to time been found useful in justification or exposition to use terminology familiar to the law of contracts rather than of torts should be neither surprising nor diverting. As we have recognized, depending on the factual context in which the issue arises or the alternati theory pursued by the litigant, the liability of the product-manufacturer could indeed have been grounded in contract rather than tort theory, or indeed sometimes in both. Historically it even appears that these two fields have not been so categorically discrete as we are sometimes inclined to suppose. ² As in other instances in the law, analysis and enlightenment are not always advanced when heavy reliance is placed on labels; indeed understanding may even be obscured.

Whatever may have been earlier doubt and confusion, the authorities are now in general agreement that strict products liability sounds in tort rather than in contract. 'It has been said over and over again that this warranty--if that is the name for it--is not the old sales warranty, it is not the warranty covered by the Uniform Sales Act or the Uniform Commercial Code. It is not a warranty of the seller to the buyer at all, but it is something separate and distinct which sounds in tort exclusively, and not at all in contract; which exists apart from any contract between the parties; and which makes for strict liability in tort.' (Prosser, Spectacular Change: Products Liability in General, 36 Cleveland Bar Assn.J. 167--168.) (Velez v. Craine & Clark Lbr. Corp., 33 N.Y.2d 117, 124--125, 350 N.Y.S.2d 617, 623, 305 N.E.2d 750, 754 ('strict products liability sounds in tort rather than in contract'); Goldberg v. Kollsman Instrument Corp., supra, 12 N.Y.2d p. 436, 240 N.Y.S.2d p. 594, 191 N.E.2d p. 82 ('A breach of warranty, it is now clear, is not only a violation of the sales contract out of which the warranty arises but is a tortious wrong suable by a noncontracting party whose use of the warranted article is within the reasonable contemplation of the vendor or manufacturer'); Restatement 2d, Torts, § 402A, comment M; Arrow Transp. Co. v. Fruehauf Corp., D.C., 289 F.Supp. 170, 172; Hornung v. Richardson-Merrill, D.C., 317 F.Supp. 183, 185; Rosenau v. City of New Brunswick, 51 N.J. 130, 141--144, 238 A.2d 169; Abate v. Barkers of Wallingford, 27 Conn.Sup. 46, 51--53, 229 A.2d 366; 3 Frumer & Friedman, Products Liability, § 40.01, subd. (2); Products Liability: Strict Liability in Tort, Ann., 13 A.L.R.3d 1057.)

Some further analysis is reassuring before jumping, kneejerk-like, to the conclusion that if liability is grounded in tort, tort Statute of Limitations must automatically be applied. '(I)n applying the statute of limitations we look for the reality, and the essence of the action and not its mere name.' (Brick v. Cohn-Hall-Marx Co., 276 N.Y. 259, 264, 11 N.E.2d 902, 904.)

Restrictions of time on claim assertion involve two aspects--how long shall the period be...