Opinion ID: 195949
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: An All-Factors Evaluative Determination

Text: 52 Appellant's weighing-of-all-factors argument, if taken at face value and without qualification, leads implicitly to a surrender of judicial responsibility for instructing the jury to respect the law's outside limits on jury discretion. It is true that appellant's argument for an unlimited all-factors evaluative determination by the jury has a surface plausibility, which may appear to be reinforced by support in some states for application of a standard requiring the jury to weigh competing factors much as they would in determining the fault of the defendant in a negligence case. Back v. Wickes, 375 Mass. 633, 378 N.E.2d 964, 970 (1978). Thus: 53 In evaluating the adequacy of a product's design, the jury should consider, among other factors, the gravity of the danger posed by the challenged design, the likelihood that such danger would occur, the mechanical feasibility of a safer alternative design, the financial cost of an improved design, and the adverse consequences to the product and to the consumer that would result from an alternative design. 54 Id. 378 N.E.2d at 970 (quoting Barker v. Lull Eng'r Co., 20 Cal.3d 413, 143 Cal.Rptr. 225, 573 P.2d 443 (1978) and citing Bowman v. General Motors Corp., 427 F.Supp. 234, 242 (E.D.Pa.1977)). 55 The plausibility of appellant's argument is reinforced by the statement of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in Thibault that: 56 Inquiry into the dangerousness of a product requires a multi-faceted balancing process involving evaluation of many conflicting factors.... Reasonableness, foreseeability, utility, and similar factors are questions of fact for jury determination. 57 Thibault, 395 A.2d at 846-47; see also Espeaignnette v. Gene Tierney Co., 43 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.1994) (citing St. Germain v. Husqvarna Corp., 544 A.2d 1283 (Me.1988) and discussing the danger-utility test used by the Maine courts). Perhaps even more supportive of appellant's argument is another passage from the opinion of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Back v. Wickes Corp.: 58 In balancing all of the pertinent factors [in deciding whether there was a design defect] the jury makes a judgment as to the social acceptability of the design, and this is the same judgment originally made by the designer of the product. 59 378 N.E.2d at 970. 60 Even if one takes these passages to mean that some policy weighing is left to the jury, however, it does not follow that the legal system approves an unlimited all-factors evaluative determination by the jury. Even when approving a multiple-factors-weighing-test for jury use in finding an ultimate fact, such as product defect, the legal system does not authorize the jury to give whatever weight the jury chooses to arguments of public policy for and against strict liability. To do so would leave to the jury an authority and responsibility that is unguided by any public policy determinations made in statutes and precedents. 61 Ordinarily issues of public policy are in the first instance appropriate for a legislature's determination by statute and, if not determined by statute, may be determined by a state court of last resort in its decisions setting precedents. 62 We do not understand appellant's counsel as explicitly arguing for a broad and sweeping jury discretion that extends to public policy issues ordinarily decided by statutes or precedents. We consider the argument in this extreme form, however, because of the procedural posture of this case. 63 Appellant seeks a new trial despite a supportable jury finding that defendant did not fail to exercise ordinary prudence with respect to warning and instructions for use. This contention, however, is procedurally barred unless plaintiff proffered an instruction or objection clearly giving the trial judge and the opposing party notice of this theory of claim, including a formulation of an acceptable limit or qualification to distinguish plaintiff's contention from an argument for unlimited jury discretion. Thus, we consider the more extreme implications of the unqualified argument to make the two points that a limit is essential and that the burden is on the plaintiff to propose an acceptable explanation of that limit rather than asking a trial court to leave a jury unguided. 64 To sustain appellant's argument for a new trial on the procedural record before us, we would have to determine that New Hampshire tort law places no limit on the jury's authority, in reaching the jury's overall evaluative finding in a strict liability case, to weigh all policy arguments (or at least those policy arguments supported by any evidence received in the trial) for and against strict liability, in reaching the jury's overall evaluative finding in a strict liability case. 65 We cannot say that New Hampshire has adopted, and cannot predict that it will adopt, the novel position that the jury has this authority. Allowing the jury such sweeping authority would be contrary to premises so fundamental that courts only rarely sense a need to advert to them. 66 The first of these basic premises of settled law concerns the role of precedent in the legal system. A court's acceptance of an argument for a literally all-factors evaluative decision by a jury of a strict product liability claim would have the effect of delegating to the jury the authority and responsibility for weighing conflicting arguments of public policy bearing upon the scope and limits of strict liability and striking the balance that determines the legal system's answer, case by case. This would undermine the function of precedent in the legal system--to promote evenhanded decision of like cases alike. Judicial decisions considering similar arguments for jury discretion to weigh public policy arguments have rejected the idea. See, e.g., Shackil v. Lederle Laboratories, 116 N.J. 155, 561 A.2d 511, 528 (1989) (the majority, over vigorous dissent, declined to leave to a jury a public policy choice that, it was argued, would drive DPT vaccine for infants off the market); Bammerlin v. Navistar Int'l Transp. Corp., 30 F.3d 898 (7th Cir.1994) (the trial court, not the jury, should have made the evaluative determination whether a truck cab manufacturer complied with federal safety standards); Bryant v. Tri-County Electric Membership Corp., 844 F.Supp. 347 (W.D.Ky.1994) (the court, not the jury, weighed the public policy goals of protecting consumer and discouraging the sale of defective goods and held that the strict liability doctrine applied to the services of electric utilities). But cf. Dawson v. Chrysler Corp., 630 F.2d 950, 962-63 (3d Cir.1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 959, 101 S.Ct. 1418, 67 L.Ed.2d 383 (1981) (recognizing the dangers of such a case-by-case determination in the context of motor vehicle safety standards but declining to reverse a judgment entered on a verdict of a jury that was allowed very broad discretion by the trial court's charge). 67 A second basic premise of settled law is that determinations of liability (whether under a concept of duty or cause or some other terminology such as scope of liability) are never exclusively fact questions to be decided by a jury, or by a judge as factfinder in a non-jury trial. Even when some disputed issue of historical fact is relevant, the determination of duty, cause, or scope of liability is a mixed law-fact determination rather than exclusively a fact question. See, e.g., Deguio v. United States, 920 F.2d 103, 105 (1st Cir.1990) (determination of negligence is a mixed question of law and fact and entitled to clear error standard of review); St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Caguas Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass'n, 867 F.2d 707, 708 (1st Cir.1989) (Negligence and causation are traditionally mixed questions of fact and law.); cf. Milliken & Co. v. Consolidated Edison Co., 84 N.Y.2d 469, 619 N.Y.S.2d 686, 644 N.E.2d 268 (N.Y.Ct.App.1994) (The existence and scope of an alleged tortfeasor's duty, at the threshold, is a legal, policy-laden determination dependent on consideration of different forces, including logic, science, [and] competing socio-economic policies....). 68 When a jury participates in the determination of a mixed-law-fact question, it does so under instructions from the trial judge explaining the legal aspects of the evaluative finding the jury makes. See Kissell v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 367 F.2d 375, 376 (1st Cir.1966) (special interrogatories to the jury can be mixed questions of law and fact, if the jury is properly instructed as to the law); see also Chellman, 637 A.2d at 151 (Clear and intelligible jury instructions are particularly important to explain complex or confusing legal concepts.). 69 In the face of these settled principles, no decision cited to us, and none of which we are aware, in New Hampshire or elsewhere, requires the submission to the jury of a single evaluative question determining a strict liability claim. We conclude that, in deciding this appeal in a diversity case, we should not predict an expansion of strict liability under New Hampshire law to the extent of permitting juries a discretion not guided by instructions on the limits set by the public policy choices, explicit and implicit, in New Hampshire statutes and precedents. Cf. Thibault, 395 A.2d at 847 (indicating that the strict liability cause of action is narrower in New Hampshire than in some other jurisdictions); Bagley v. Controlled Environment Corp., 127 N.H. 556, 503 A.2d 823, 826 (1986) (discussing Buttrick v. Lessard, 110 N.H. 36, 260 A.2d 111 (1969) and stating that the strict liability actions are limited to claims for which requiring a plaintiff to prove negligence would pose a practical barrier to otherwise meritorious claims).