Opinion ID: 1967435
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Central conceptions borrowed from negligence theory are embedded in strict products liability doctrine in Pennsylvania.

Text: First off, the lead opinion acknowledges that under prevailing authority of this Court, foreseeability, a conception firmly rooted in negligence theory, is assessed in strict liability cases involving certain types of product alterations. See Opinion, ___ Pa. at ___, at 1006-07 (citing Davis v. Berwind Corp., 547 Pa. 260, 690 A.2d 186 (1997)). Since they decline to disavow this precept, the lead Justices' broad proclamation that negligence concepts have no place in strict liability law, id. at ___, at 1007, is disproved on the face of their own analysis. Of course, the product alteration scenario is but one discrete aspect of strict liability doctrine. But even more fundamentally, Pennsylvania trial and appellate courts, and federal courts applying Pennsylvania law, have been employing other aspects of negligence theory as central principles controlling design defect litigation for more than twenty years. Webb v. Zern, 422 Pa. 424, 220 A.2d 853 (1966), accepted that a manufacturer or supplier should be liable for sale or distribution of a product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer or his property, thus bringing the basic framework of Section 402A of the Second Restatement of Torts into the jurisprudence. See id. at 427, 220 A.2d at 854. Significantly, scholars have pointed out that Section 402A developed in a landscape in which most of the relevant litigation centered on manufacturing, as opposed to design, defects. [1] See, e.g., John W. Wade, On the Nature of Strict Tort Liability for Products, 44 MISS. L.J. 825, 825 (1973) (The prototype case was that in which something went wrong in the manufacturing process, so that the product had a loose screw or a defective or missing part or a deleterious element, and was not the safe product it was intended to be.). [2] A primary difficulty facing injured plaintiffs in the manufacturing defect line of cases was that, although an undisputed defect may have affected the safety of a final product, there remained inherent and often insurmountable obstacles to proof that the manufacturer failed to exercise due care in the production process, as would be necessary to sustenance of a cause of action grounded in negligence. One of the core objectives of Section 402A was to relieve plaintiffs of such burden. See Wade, On the Nature of Strict Tort Liability for Products, 44 Miss. L.J. at 825-26 (No longer was it necessary [under Section 402A] to prove negligence on the part of some employee in the assembly line or in the system under which the line functioned or in failing to inspect the finished product adequately.). See generally Griggs v. BIC Corp., 981 F.2d 1429, 1432 (3d Cir.1992). [3] Nevertheless, the intent of the Second Restatement was not to render the manufacturer an insurer of his product, responsible for any and all harm caused from the use of its product, regardless of the product's utility and relative safety. See, e.g., Azzarello v. Black Bros. Co., 480 Pa. 547, 555, 391 A.2d 1020, 1025 (1978). In order to impose appropriate limitations on the doctrine, therefore, as design defect litigation evolved, courts generally, and Pennsylvania courts in particular, recognized an integral role for risk-utility (or cost-benefit) balancing, derived from negligence theory. [4] This was alluded to in Azzarello, 480 Pa. at 558, 391 A.2d at 1026 (suggesting that a court inquire as to whether the utility of a product outweigh[s] the unavoidable danger it may pose), and essentially engrafted on Pennsylvania law in Burch v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 320 Pa.Super. 444, 450, 467 A.2d 615, 618 (1983) (The finding of a defect requires a balancing of the utility of the product against the seriousness and likelihood of the injury and the availability of precautions that, though not foolproof, might prevent the injury.), and Dambacher ex rel. Dambacher v. Mallis, 336 Pa.Super. 22, 50, 485 A.2d 408, 422 (1984). [5] Both Azzarello and Dambacher evaluated, and considered favorably, portions of a seminal article by Dean John W. Wade in elaborating on such construct, in which Dean Wade also highlighted the marked similarities between negligence and strict liability in defective design cases, see Wade, On the Nature of Strict Liability for Products, 44 MISS. L.J. at 837-38, as well as the direct derivation of strict liability risk-utility balancing from negligence doctrine. See id. [6] As justification for its adherence to the position that negligence concepts have no place in strict liability, the lead opinion indicates that [s]trict liability focuses solely on the product, and is divorced from the conduct of the manufacturer. Opinion, at ___. But, while this was a common aphorism in the developmental stages of strict liability doctrine, and the lead Justices are not alone in perpetuating it, most courts and commentators have come to realize that in design cases the character of the product and the conduct of the manufacturer are largely inseparable. For example, one pair of commentators has explained: One of the most frequently repeated distinctions is that even though both [negligence and strict liability] risk/utility tests focus on reasonableness, strict liability focuses on the reasonableness of the product, whereas negligence focuses on the reasonableness of the seller. In theory a product manufacturer could act reasonably in designing a product, but its product could nevertheless be unreasonably dangerous. Perhaps, however, the key words in this formulation are in theory. In practice, manufacturers consciously choose how to design their products. Asking whether the product is reasonable tends to circle back to asking whether the manufacturer used due care in designing it. The effort at distinguishing between reasonable products and reasonable manufacturers may be more of a weak excuse for articulating two tests than a true justification. Cupp and Polage, The Rhetoric of Strict Products Liability Versus Negligence, 77 N.Y.U.L. REV. at 893 (footnotes omitted). This point is made more forcefully by the Reporters for the new Restatement: [T]o condemn a design for being unreasonably dangerous is inescapably to condemn the designer for having been negligent. To insist otherwise would be akin to a professor telling a law student that, while the brief the student wrote is awful, the professor is not passing judgment on the student's skill in writing it. Similarly, ... insistence that strict liability is somehow being imposed if the court assesses the reasonableness of the design and not the reasonableness of the designer's conduct is purest sophistry. Henderson and Twerski, Achieving Consensus on Defective Product Design, 83 CORNELL L.REV. at 919; see also Wade, Strict Tort Liability of Manufacturers, 19 Sw. L.J. at 15. See generally Duchess, 564 Pa. at 546-47, 769 A.2d at 1141-42 (citing cases). The concern, expressed by the lead Justices here, with the purity of strict liability theory has been previously addressed, for example, by Dean Wade. See, e.g., Wade, On the Nature of Strict Tort Liability for Products, 44 MISS. L.J. at 835 (A possible initial impression is that [express recognition of the role of negligence concepts in strict products liability theory] is rank apostasy, amounting to an abandonment of the strict-liability concept and a return to the negligence concept will be seen as erroneous on analysis). Dean Wade's answer, however, was not to perpetuate a fiction, but rather, to acknowledge that the strict liability dynamic pertains to the plaintiff's burden of establishing due care in the manufacture/supply process; whereas, concepts derived from negligence theory serve a critical role at other stages (or in other aspects) of the liability assessment. See, e.g., id. at 834-35; see also Wade, Strict Tort Liability of Manufacturers, 19 Sw. L.J. at 15; accord RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: PRODUCTS LIABILITY § 1 cmt. a (1998) (`[S]trict products liability' is a term of art that reflects the judgment that products liability is a discrete area of tort law which borrows from both negligence and warranty.). I believe that the time has come for this Court, in the manner of so many other jurisdictions, to expressly recognize the essential role of risk-utility balancing, a concept derived from negligence doctrine, in design defect litigation. In doing so, the Court should candidly address the ramifications, in particular, the overt, necessary, and proper incorporation of aspects of negligence theory into the equation. This Commonwealth's products liability jurisprudence is far too confusing for another opinion to be laid down that rhetorically eschews negligence concepts in the strict liability arena, while the Court nevertheless continues to abide and/or endorse their actual use in the liability assessment. Cf. Surace, 111 F.3d at 1046 (We regret that the [Pennsylvania] Supreme Court has not yet spoken definitively on the matter of risk-utility analysis or its component factors.).