Opinion ID: 1057790
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence of Other Fires

Text: The issue before this Court is whether the circuit court erred in its determination that the proffered evidence of fires in seven other Windstar vans was inadmissible to establish that Ford had notice and actual knowledge of a defective condition. The issue relates to the admissibility of the evidence, therefore the proper standard of review is abuse of discretion. 8 Midkiff v. Commonwealth, 280 Va. 216, 219, 694 S.E.2d 576, 578 (2010) (citing Coe v. Commonwealth, 231 Va. 83, 87, 340 S.E.2d 820, 823 (1986)). In his amended complaint, Funkhouser proceeded on a theory that Ford failed to warn users of a known fire hazard in its Windstar vans. It is well established that, “[a] manufacturer is not an insurer of its product’s safety, and a manufacturer has a duty to warn only if it knows or has reason to know that its product is dangerous.” Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. v. Watson, 243 Va. 128, 134, 413 S.E.2d 630, 634 (1992). Thus, in bringing a failure to warn claim, a party must prove that the manufacturer: (a) knows or has reason to know that the chattel is or is likely to be dangerous for the use for which it is supplied, and (b) has no reason to believe that those for whose use the chattel is supplied will realize its dangerous condition, and (c) fails to exercise reasonable care to inform them of its dangerous condition or of the facts which make it likely to be dangerous. Featherall v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 219 Va. 949, 962, 252 S.E.2d 358, 366 (1979) (quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts § 388 (1965)). To establish that a manufacturer knows or has reason to know of the danger in a duty to warn case, a plaintiff may present evidence of similar incidents, provided the prior 9 incidents occurred “ ‘under substantially the same circumstances, and had been caused by the same or similar defects and dangers as those in issue.’ ” Roll ‘R’ Way Rinks, Inc. v. Smith, 218 Va. 321, 325, 237 S.E.2d 157, 160 (1977) (quoting Spurlin v. Richardson, 203 Va. 984, 989, 128 S.E.2d 273, 277 (1962)). “This rule springs from the lessons of human experience that similar causes can be expected to produce similar effects.” Id. In the present case, all Funkhouser can show is that the incidents occurred under substantially the same circumstances; he cannot show that the fires were caused by the same or similar defects. Indeed, Funkhouser implicitly concedes this fact, as he amended his initial complaint from a design defect claim to a failure to warn claim because he realized that he could not definitively prove the specific defect that caused the fire. Similarly, he cannot prove what defect, if any, caused the fires in the other vehicles. Therefore, the circuit court did not err in excluding the evidence of the other seven fires. Funkhouser, however, asserts that this requirement actually results in an evidentiary threshold that is higher than what is required to prove the merits of his claims. Funkhouser notes that liability under a failure to warn claim does not require a showing of any defect, only a showing that the manufacturer “knows or has reason to know that its product is dangerous.” 10 Owens-Corning, 243 Va. at 134, 413 S.E.2d at 634. Thus, Funkhouser advocates that a relaxed substantial similarity test, where the terms “defects” and “dangers” are interchangeable, is necessary in failure to warn cases. “Evidence of other similar accidents or occurrences, when relevant, is admissible to show that the defendant had notice and actual knowledge of a defective condition,” provided the prior accidents or occurrences happened “under substantially the same circumstances, and had been caused by the same or similar defects and dangers as those in issue.” General Motors Corp. v. Lupica, 237 Va. 516, 521, 379 S.E.2d 311, 314 (1989) (emphasis added) (quoting Spurlin, 203 Va. at 989, 128 S.E.2d at 277). Thus, the substantial similarity test consists of two prongs: (1) the substantially same circumstances prong and (2) the causation prong. Removal of the defect requirement from the causation prong would allow a plaintiff to attribute notice and actual knowledge to a manufacturer based on the mere existence of a generalized danger; there would be no requirement for the danger to be attributable to the manufacturer in any way. This Court has previously rejected such generalized liability, recognizing that “[a] manufacturer is not an insurer of its product’s safety.” Owens-Corning, 243 Va. at 134, 413 S.E.2d at 634; see also Jones v. Ford Motor Co., 263 Va. 237, 254, 559 S.E.2d 592, 601 (2002) (requiring proof that the cause of the dangerous condition was a defect so as to 11 attribute knowledge of that condition to the manufacturer); Lupica, 237 Va. at 522, 379 S.E.2d at 315 (rejecting evidence of a generalized dangerous condition that was not shown to have resulted from a defect in the manufacturer’s product). 3 Indeed, Funkhouser’s relaxed substantial similarity test would undermine the entire causation prong of the test. By advocating the elimination of the requirement of similar defects from the test, Funkhouser is asking this Court to invert the test and infer similar causes, i.e., defects, from the existence of similar effects, i.e., fires. This inversion simply does not work: although a faulty cigarette lighter may cause a key-off dashboard electrical fire, not all key-off dashboard electrical fires are caused by a faulty cigarette lighter. Whether it is a products liability claim or a failure to warn claim, our jurisprudence establishes that the evidentiary test governing the admissibility of evidence relating to prior incidents must be strictly adhered to. To hold otherwise would allow a plaintiff to establish that a manufacturer knows or has reason to know of a danger based on prior incidents that were not attributable to that manufacturer. Therefore, we reject 3 It is of no consequence that Lupica involved a design defect claim, 237 Va. at 518, 379 S.E.2d at 312, or that Jones involved both a design defect claim and a failure to warn claim, 263 Va. at 242, 559 S.E.2d at 594. In both cases, the substantial similarity test was used for the same purpose as it was in this case: to establish that a manufacturer knew or had reason to know of a dangerous condition. 12 Funkhouser’s argument that the court should adopt a relaxed substantial similarity test for the admissibility of prior incident evidence in failure to warn causes of action. In order for the proffered evidence to be admissible to show that Ford knew or had reason to know that there was a danger of key-off dashboard electrical fires, Funkhouser must demonstrate that the other seven Windstar fires were caused by the same or similar defect. This does not mean that Funkhouser must identify the specific defect that caused the fire in his van or the other seven vans. 4 As our cases have demonstrated, 4 Funkhouser notes that, in its December 31, 2010 letter opinion sustaining Ford’s motion in limine, the circuit court stated that “the Funkhouser defect has to be identified with specificity to charge Ford with actual notice of that defect.” (Emphasis added.) However, we have cautioned against taking a court’s ruling out of context by focusing on one isolated phrase. See Yarborough v. Commonwealth, 217 Va. 971, 978, 234 S.E.2d 286, 291 (1977) (“[W]e will not fix upon isolated statements of the trial judge taken out of the full context in which they were made, and use them as a predicate for holding the law has been misapplied.”). Here, the circuit court went on in its analysis of the fires to require Funkhouser to either prove the defect that caused the fires or to rule out all other causes, which it concluded Funkhouser failed to do: Even if there were enough specificity [referring to the Funkhouser fire] there is not enough specificity noted in the seven fires to say what the defect was that Ford has to warn of or correct. Furthermore, whether work had been done on those vehicles is not known and whether the original equipment as manufactured was in place in the seven fires is not known. Additionally, arson was not ruled out in some of the fires. 13 there are two avenues for a plaintiff in Virginia to establish substantial similarity in a failure to warn claim against a manufacturer: (1) through identification of the accident’s cause, which must be attributable to the manufacturer, or (2) through the elimination of other potential causes that are not attributable to the manufacturer. 5 See Jones, 263 Va. at 256-57, 559 S.E.2d at 602. In this case, Funkhouser can neither identify the cause of the fires nor rule out all other possible causes of the fires, including post-manufacture repairs, replacement parts in the dash, arson, or misuse. For this reason we hold that the evidence fails the substantial similarity test.