Opinion ID: 1774192
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Historic Separation of Strict Liability From Contract Actions

Text: In Nobility we also rejected the idea that our present Texas rule of strict liability is grounded upon Jacob E. Decker & Sons, Inc. v. Capps, 139 Tex. 609, 164 S.W.2d 828 (1942). The court of civil appeals in Nobility had placed its decision upon the contract principle of an implied warranty of reasonable fitness of a product as a matter of public policy. 539 S.W.2d at 194. We expressly held that the protection of Texas consumers no longer requires that questionable legal basis, particularly since Texas has now adopted section 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts and the Uniform Commercial Code. The true beginning of the rule which separates the tort action of strict liability from contract actions is MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., 217 N.Y. 382, 111 N.E. 1050 (1916). The dividing line that was there located has been adopted in Texas, and we should not substitute a confusing and different one. The case concerned a dangerously defective automobile that the plaintiff had purchased. He sued the remote manufacturer in tort, and the court permitted the suit. MacPherson was injured when the defective wooden spokes of a wheel on his Buick collapsed. In making the determination whether the action should be governed by tort or contract law, Justice Cardozo established a division line and provided a test. Justice Cardozo justified the tort action as a departure from ordinary contract law by a reliance upon precedents about defective products which presented great danger, possessed a potency of danger, or were dangerous. Justice Cardozo also relied upon Lord Esher's statement in Heaven v. Pender, 11 Q.B.D. 503 (1883) which, as Justice Cardozo expressed it, irrespective of contract, imposed upon the manufacturer a tort duty. The opinion quoted Lord Esher in making that distinction between contract and tort: Whenever one person supplies goods or machinery, or the like, for the purpose of their being used by another person under such circumstances that every one of ordinary sense would, if he thought, recognize at once that unless he used ordinary care and skill with regard to the condition of the thing supplied, or the mode of supplying it, there will be danger of injury to the person or property of him for whose use the thing is supplied, and who is to use it, a duty arises to use ordinary care and skill as to the condition or manner of supplying such thing. Section 402A captured and refined that early distinction between the tort action that we today call strict liability and a contract action. Texas, in a number of precedents, has fully adopted the principles of that section, and in my judgment, the substitution of different criteria will harm both tort and contract actions. The rule of 402A and Nobility can more easily be applied since it is capable of clearer statement and more definitive findings.