Opinion ID: 556603
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Fitting the Framework to the Case.

Text: 73 Against this backdrop, we turn to the record to determine whether the district court's erroneous withdrawal of the breach of warranty count from jury consideration was prejudicial. At trial, Kotler faced a formidable task to make out a prima facie case for failure to warn on either theory (negligence or breach of warranty). She had to prove, first, that ATC had a duty to warn of the dangers of cigarettes before 1966--a burden which required her to show that at some fixed point in time ATC, but not the average consumer, knew or should have known of the potential health hazards. Once the duty to warn was established, and it was shown that no warnings were given, it still remained for appellant to prove that the failure to warn caused decedent's illness and death. The causation inquiry entailed two parts, necessitating proof that (1) ATC's cigarettes were a cause in fact of the harm, and (2) ATC's failure to warn was a proximate or legal cause of the injuries. See generally Swift v. United States, 866 F.2d 507, 509-10 (1st Cir.1989) (explicating difference between actual causation and proximate causation under Massachusetts law). Each of these inquiries is the same whether done in connection with a negligence theory or a breach of warranty theory. See Lowery, 725 F.Supp. at 85. In addition, proof of what the average consumer knew at any set point in time is invariant with respect to the theory of liability, see supra note 16; and proof of what the decedent himself knew at any time is invariant, albeit germane with respect to proximate cause. See id. at 84-85. It is readily apparent, then, that the only relevant difference between the two theories on the facts of this case concerns the imputation of knowledge; after all, we can assume the jury's rationality--and a rational jury, to be consistent on these facts, would have to resolve all the relevant issues identically, whether under negligence or warranty, save only the issue pertaining to whether, pre-1966, the health hazards associated with smoking were knowable by ATC. 74 Taking all this into account, our scrutiny must be directed to those portions of the charge relating to the duty to warn. If that duty was posited in terms that met the more exacting warranty standard for imputed knowledge, then the court's failure to submit both counts to the jury was inconsequential and the verdict for the defendant necessarily betokened plaintiff's failure to establish a warranty case. 18 75 Before examining the district court's instructions on knowledge to determine if those instructions were equivalent to the instructions due a properly advised jury on breach of warranty, it seems useful to review the instruction found proper in Anderson respecting knowledge vis-a-vis a claimed breach of warranty for failure to warn. There, the district court charged: 76 [T]he duty to warn extends only to such dangers--to such dangers or defects about which the manufacturer either actually knew or about which it reasonably should have known. Now should have known here means that a manufacturer is held to that level of knowledge which the experts in the particular industry had or in view of the state of medical and scientific knowledge in general should have had at any particular time. 77 Anderson, 799 F.2d at 2. We upheld that instruction and believe it is equally apposite here. Cigarettes, like asbestos, do not pose open and obvious dangers. If such dangers were unknowable at some point in time, no effective warning about them could have been given. See id. at 4. Ergo, if the district court were to have ceded Kotler her full entitlement and charged the jury on breach of warranty, the appropriate charge, like the one approved in Anderson, would have resonated the tenets embedded in Restatement Sec. 402A (and particularly, comment j) rather than the language of the Hayes dictum, as plaintiff might wish. 78 Serendipitously, the court below, purposing to discuss negligence, gave a charge that was to all intents identical to the Anderson charge, instructing the jury to impute expert knowledge. 19 Thus, while directing a verdict for ATC on the warranty claim, the court in effect took from ATC with the right hand what it had bestowed with the left, sending to the jury a claim fully equivalent to breach of warranty. Phrased another way, the charge as rendered, although it overstated the duty on negligence, contained all that appellant could properly have demanded on warranty. Hence, the erroneous allowance of the directed verdict was, in the end, harmless. 79 No different conclusion is required because the judge also instructed the jury about the manufacturer's reasonableness. A warranty instruction may contain such language when the knowledge that is imputed to the manufacturer about the existence of a danger is contradictory or uncertain, and an assessment must be made as to whether the existence of the danger was indeed knowable. Cf., e.g., Moran, 691 F.2d at 814. That was precisely the case here; at trial, various experts testified about the existence of different studies at different times, discussing the possible connection between cigarettes and lung disease. The evidence presented a complex picture of conflicted, sometimes speculative, information. Against this mise-en-scene, an instruction to the effect that evaluation of this evidence centered around reasonableness was a proper statement of law, under warranty theory as well as under negligence theory. 80 In sum, then, the court below, on the negligence count, gave what amounted to a warranty instruction with respect to the imputation of knowledge. Since all other elements of the negligence and warranty claims were congruent, and the only meaningful distinction between the two related to the standard for imputing knowledge, this charge ensured that the jury's finding on the negligence count accurately and inevitably foretold what would have transpired if the warranty count had also been submitted to the jury. Thus, the lower court's erroneous refusal to send the warranty claim to the jury did not deprive the plaintiff of the chance to have the factfinders consider some other or different concept which they might have resolved in a way more favorable to her. It follows inexorably that appellant's substantial rights were not prejudiced. 20 There is no cause for reversal.