Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 977.0

529US3

Unit: $U62

[09-26-01 12:54:02] PAGES PGT: OPIN

902

GEIER v. AMERICAN HONDA MOTOR CO.

Stevens, J., dissenting

table time interval between the eventual ﬁling of a tort ac-
tion alleging that the failure to install an airbag is a design
defect and the possible resolution of such a claim against a
manufacturer, as well as the additional
interval between
such a resolution (if any) and manufacturers’ “compliance
with the state-law duty in question,” ante, at 882, by modify-
ing their designs to avoid such liability in the future, it is
obvious that the phase-in period would have ended long be-
fore its purposes could have been frustrated by the specter
of tort liability. Thus, even without pre-emption, the public
would have been given the time that the Secretary deemed
necessary to gradually adjust to the increasing use of airbag
technology and allay their unfounded concerns about it.
Moreover, even if any no-airbag suits were ultimately re-
solved against manufacturers, the resulting incentive to
modify their designs would have been quite different from a
decision by the Secretary to mandate the use of airbags in
every vehicle. For example, if the extra credit provided for
the use of nonbelt passive restraint technologies during the
phase-in period had (as the Secretary hoped) ultimately en-
couraged manufacturers to develop a nonbelt system more
effective than the airbag, manufacturers held liable for fail-
ing to install passive restraints would have been free to re-
spond by modifying their designs to include such a system
instead of an airbag.18
It seems clear, therefore, that any

18 The Court’s failure to “understand [this point] correctly,” ante, at 883,
is directly attributable to its fundamental misconception of the nature of
duties imposed by tort law. A general verdict of liability in a case seeking
damages for negligent and defective design of a vehicle that (like Ms.
Geier’s) lacked any passive restraints does not amount to an immutable,
mandatory “rule of state tort law imposing . . . a duty [to install an air-
bag].” Ante, at 881; see also ante, at 871 (referring to verdict in common-
law tort suit as a “jury-imposed safety standard”). Rather, that verdict
merely reﬂects the jury’s judgment that the manufacturer of a vehicle
without any passive restraint system breached its duty of due care by
designing a product that was not reasonably safe because a reasonable
alternative design—“including, but not limited to, airbags,” App. 3—could