Opinion ID: 429450
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defense of Unique Susceptibility.

Text: 26 Procter & Gamble argues that the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury to find for Procter & Gamble if the jury determined that Mrs. Kehm's death resulted from her unique susceptibility to TSS. Procter & Gamble argues that Iowa law, which applies in this diversity case, does not hold a manufacturer liable for injury resulting from the use of an ordinarily safe product where the injury occurs because of some unusual susceptibility of the user, not common to the general public, which the manufacturer could not reasonably have foreseen. 27 The Iowa case on which Procter & Gamble relies, Bonowski v. Revlon, Inc., 251 Iowa 141, 100 N.W.2d 5 (1959), is inapposite. There, the Iowa Supreme Court refused to hold that the manufacturer had been negligent in failing to foresee a user's idiosyncratic allergic reaction to a suntan lotion, or that it had breached any warranty, express or implied. But in 1970, eleven years after Bonowski, the Iowa court adopted the rule of strict products liability. See Hawkeye-Security Insurance Co. v. Ford Motor Co., 174 N.W.2d 672. Procter & Gamble does not dispute that that rule applies here. Under a strict liability regime, the manufacturer can be held liable even though it was not negligent and breached no warranty. We are therefore unable to see how Bonowski's holding that failure to foresee an idiosyncratic reaction does not constitute negligence or breach of warranty applies in this case, where neither negligence nor breach of warranty is at issue. 28 In this case, the focus is rather on whether Procter & Gamble had an obligation to warn users of Rely of the possibility of TSS (assuming, of course, that the product was not so dangerous that even due warning to users would not save the manufacturer from liability). In failure-to-warn cases, as in strict liability cases generally, liability does not turn on whether the risk of harm runs to a substantial number of persons. Rather, in determining whether a manufacturer has a duty to warn, courts inquire whether the manufacturer knew that there were even a relatively few persons who could not use its product without serious injury, and whether a proper warning would have helped prevent harm to them. See Reyes v. Wyeth Laboratories, supra, 498 F.2d at 1278; Basko v. Sterling Drug, Inc., 416 F.2d 417, 430 (2nd Cir.1969); Wright v. Carter Products, 244 F.2d 53, 58 (2nd Cir.1957). The plaintiffs introduced evidence to show that Procter & Gamble had reason to know of the TSS risk to some Rely users sometime before Mrs. Kehm used the product and died. Nor is this a case in which the plaintiff, unaware of her unusual susceptibility, suffered an adverse reaction so immediate and deadly that a proper warning could not have prevented harm. Mrs. Kehm used Rely tampons beginning four days before her death. Although she became increasingly ill during those four days, she continued to use Rely, unaware of its role in her illness. On these facts, the jury could reasonably find that, had a proper warning been given, Mrs. Kehm might have recognized her symptoms and discontinued using tampons. 29 Even if Mrs. Kehm was unusually susceptible, her susceptibility is not by itself necessarily enough to absolve Procter & Gamble of liability. The real issue is whether it breached its duty to warn. Thus the district court did not err in refusing to instruct the jury that if it found Mrs. Kehm unusually susceptible, it must for that reason alone find Procter & Gamble not liable. 30