Opinion ID: 2293263
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Risk-Utility and Consumer Expectations

Text: The difficult issue of giving appropriate content to the interrelated concepts of unreasonable dangerousness and defect remains. The central problem with Azzarello is that it removed the former from the fact-finder's purview entirely and gave insufficient content to the latter. The two primary vehicles for adding the necessary content are the consumer expectations test and risk-utility balancing. [7] A wealth of diverse judicial opinions and commentary are devoted to discussing the role of risk-utility balancing and consumer expectations in design-defect cases. See, e.g., Owen, Design Defects, 73 MO. L.REV. at 300-21. In Pennsylvania, at least under suggested jury instructions, the fact finder would learn of neither, but rather, would be advised, per Azzarello, that [t]he product must be provided with every element necessary to make it safe for its intended use, and without any condition that makes it unsafe for its intended use. PBI, PA. SUGGESTED STANDARD JURY INSTRUCTIONS § 8.02 (3d ed.2005). A present determination that such instruction is insufficient would open the way for a full inquiry into the appropriate roles for risk-utility balancing and consumer expectations in directing the fact finder. Thus, we would have essentially come to the place in the inquiry where other courts stood in the late 1970s. The present baseline in Pennsylvania is risk-utility balancing. This much was accepted by Azzarello, although its attempt to relegate the task to the trial judge on facts most favorable to one party was misguided. Most courts recognize that consumer expectations also should play a role, but early attempts to afford it a predominant one were generally unsuccessful, and the remaining debate generally is between a relatively limited role as part of the consumer expectations test, see, e.g., Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability § 2, cmt. h, and a more significant role as a broader inquiry, more independent of risk-utility balancing. See, e.g., Mikolajczyk v. Ford Motor Co., 231 Ill.2d 516, 327 Ill.Dec. 1, 901 N.E.2d 329, 352-53 (2008); Soule v. General Motors Corp., 8 Cal.4th 548, 34 Cal.Rptr.2d 607, 882 P.2d 298, 305-08 (1994) (reasoning that, under California law, plaintiffs may recover if they establish a product either falls below consumer expectation as to safety or, if it meets ordinary consumer expectations, the fact-finder determines the product's design yields excessive preventable danger). [8] See generally Owen, Design Defects, 73 MO. L.REV. at 352-53 (As cost-benefit analysis gathers strength around the globe as the dominant method for judging whether a product's design is adequately safe, courts and legislatures continue to search for ways to accommodate consumer expectations without banishing it altogether from design defect determinations.). The appropriate juxtaposition of risk-utility balancing and consumer expectations in design cases would be an issue which would need to be resolved, in Pennsylvania, as a matter of common-law decision-making. In terms of the risk-utility balancing aspect, some adjustments would need to be made to the Wade factors commonly applied in design cases. See generally Owen, 73 MO. L.REV. at 321 (observing that modern courts rarely do little more than pay lip service to the Wade factors, which are now well past their prime). The object is obviously to capture the dynamics of reasonable design considerations in a fashion that is accessible to lay jurors, yet as succinct as possible. The common-law process would also determine the appropriate focus of risk-utility balancing by a fact-finder, which the Third Restatement and numerous commentators, at least, would center on a concomitant requirement of proof of a reasonable, alternative design. See, e.g., id. at 327 (Although the risk-utility issue in design defect cases is frequently framed vaguely in terms of a balance between the risks and benefits of the `product,' the true cost-benefit issue litigated in almost every case is much narrower whether the safety benefits of altering the product's design in a particular manner would foreseeably have exceeded the cost of the alteration. Risk-utility analysis is focused, in other words, on the costs and benefits of the specific alternative design feature proposed by the plaintiff.). [9] Again, there are numerous models available to our common pleas judges, which would be charged with the first-level, common-law selection decisions in a post- Azzarello era.