Opinion ID: 2293263
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Intended Use Doctrine

Text: In Phillips, this Court adopted a very narrow approach to the intended-use doctrine, based on a combination of two Justices' application of the no-negligence-in-strict-liability rationale, see Phillips, 576 Pa. at 656-57, 841 A.2d at 1007, and three Justices' concern with the expansion of a doctrine based on that rationale, see Phillips, 576 Pa. at 674-75, 841 A.2d at 1018-19 (Saylor, J., concurring). With the demise of these underpinnings, the Court's recognition in DGS of the rationality of subsuming within the intended-use doctrine all reasonably foreseeable uses or occurrences, see DGS, 587 Pa. at 257, 898 A.2d at 603, could be realized. This, in fact, appears to be a substantial thrust of the Third Circuit's very recent Berrier decision. See Berrier, 563 F.3d at 53-58; [1] accord Cepeda, 386 A.2d at 828 (It is ... clear that many, if not most jurisdictions now acknowledge that in applying strict liability in tort for design defects manufacturers cannot escape liability on grounds of misuse or abnormal use if the actual use proximate to the injury was objectively foreseeable. (citations omitted)).