Opinion ID: 220787
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: a product’s compliance with an applicable

Text: product safety standard or administrative regulation is properly considered in determining whether the product is defective with respect to the risks sought to be reduced by the statute or regulation, but such compliance does not preclude as a matter of law a finding of a product defect. The District Court admitted such evidence in this case. It permitted Bell to demonstrate its compliance with the CPSC Standard, 16 C.F.R. § 1203, as evidence that its helmet was not “defective,” under section 2 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts. The Covells contend that this was reversible error 17 because section 4, not section 2, of the Restatement (Third) of Torts deals with governmental regulations, and—setting aside all debate over the validity of our holding in Berrier—there has been no indication from the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania that it would apply section 4. Because section 4 is not in play, they contend, there was no basis upon which the District Court could have admitted evidence of Bell’s compliance with the CPSC Standard, regardless of which version of the Restatement it applied. For support, they rely upon Lewis v. Coffing Hoist Division, Duff-Norton, Co., 528 A.2d 590, 594 (Pa. 1987), which applied section 402A and held that evidence of industry practice or regulation is inadmissible in products liability cases. The Lewis Court reasoned that to admit industry practice and regulation in products liability cases would be to “improperly [bring] into the case concepts of negligence law.” Id. We are not persuaded. As a threshold matter, we believe that to cite to Lewis is to beg the very question at issue in this appeal: may district courts applying Pennsylvania law to products liability cases admit evidence that is relevant to negligence-type concepts, like duty of care or forseeability? To rely upon Lewis (handed down in 1987, during the zenith of Pennsylvania’s no-negligence-in-strict-liability regime) would be to assume the question out of existence, because Lewis based its reasoning entirely upon the premise that there shall be no negligence in products liability. See id. No longer can a court assume that premise is true—see Davis, 690 A.2d at 186 (applying certain negligence principles to products liability)—which means, by extension, that no longer can a court assume Lewis accurately reflects the law of Pennsylvania, cf. Aetna Life & Casualty Co. v. Barthelemy, 33 F.3d 189, 193 (3d Cir. 1994) (“Where stops the reason, there 18 stops the rule.” (quoting Karl N. Llewellyn, Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice 217 (1962))). Whether the District Court erred in admitting evidence of the CPSC Standard thus depends not on pre-Berrier decisions like Lewis, but upon the post-Berrier legal framework that controls Pennsylvania products liability cases. In our view, it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania would apply sections 1 and 2 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts (allowing negligence concepts), but not section 4 (providing for relevant industry regulation). We have difficulty imagining a negligence-friendly products liability regime that ignores compliance or non-compliance with pertinent state and federal regulations. At any rate, we need not determine whether the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania would adopt section 4 because we agree with Bell that evidence of its compliance with the CPSC Standard was relevant to section 2 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts as applied in Berrier, and was admissible pursuant to the Federal Rules of Evidence. The relevancy provisions of the Federal Rules of Evidence control in this case because they are “arguably procedural.” See Kelly v. Crown Equip. Co., 970 F.2d 1273, 1278 (3d Cir. 1992) (Federal Rules of Evidence that are “arguably procedural” control in diversity actions, “notwithstanding Pennsylvania law to the contrary.”). Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, “‘[r]elevant evidence’ means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence,” Rule 401, and “[a]ll relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Constitution of the United States, by Act of Congress, by these rules, or by other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to statutory authority,” Rule 402. 19 Applying this standard, we conclude that evidence of Bell’s compliance with the CPSC Standard was relevant to the jury’s inquiry because it went to at least two facts of consequence under section 2 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts, section 2. First, the CPSC Standard sets forth detailed rules for impact resistance and testing, and for labels and warning—both on the helmet and its sales packaging. Evidence that Bell complied with the CPSC Standard’s requirement for impact resistance testing makes it “more probable,” Rule 401, that “all possible care was exercised in the preparation and marketing of the product,” Restatement (Third) of Torts § 2(a). Second, evidence that Bell complied with the CPSC Standard makes it “less probable,” Rule 401, that “the foreseeable risks of harm posed by the product could have been reduced or avoided by the provision of reasonable instructions or warnings,” Restatement (Third) of Torts § 2(c). Of course, such evidence was not conclusive on these points, but it was relevant and therefore presumptively admissible under the Federal Rules. Our conclusion in this respect—i.e., that industry standards and government regulations are relevant to facts of consequence in this case—is also in line with the Commentary to section 2 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts. Comment (b) explicitly states that industry regulations may be relevant to a plaintiff’s case under section 2, irrespective of section 4: Section 4, dealing with violations of statutory and regulatory norms, also provides an alternate method of establishing defect. A plaintiff is not required to establish the standard for design or warning under § 2, but merely to identify a 20 government-imposed standard. Id. § 2 comment (b). Further, comment (d) states that defendants may admit evidence of industry practice to show that an alternative design would not have made their product safer: The defendant is thus allowed to introduce evidence with regard to industry practice that bears on whether the omission of an alternative design rendered the product not reasonably safe. While such evidence is admissible, it is not necessarily dispositive. Id. § 2 comment (d). The commentary to section 2 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts thus buttresses our conclusion that evidence related to the CPSC Standard was properly admitted in this case. In sum, we conclude that we need not consider whether evidence of the CPSC Standard was admissible pursuant to section 4 of the Restatement (Third) of Torts because in this case the evidence was admissible pursuant to section 2, as applied in Berrier. We will therefore affirm the District Court.