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

Heading: Several ambiguities and inconsistencies in the prevailing Pennsylvania strict products liability jurisprudence affect proper resolution of the question framed in this appeal.

Text: A primary legal question framed by this appeal is whether strict products liability doctrine requires that a plaintiff's injuries or loss be sustained during a product's use by an intended user, or merely in the course of a use that was reasonably foreseeable to the manufacturer or supplier. Since I do not agree with the lead Justices that this question can be resolved by the rhetorical exclusion of negligence concepts from strict liability doctrine, I believe that a more searching examination of the doctrine is necessary. Substantively, Pennsylvania's acceptance of risk-utility (or cost-benefit) balancing places it very much in the mainstream of modern products liability law. Thomas, Defining Design Defect in Pennsylvania, 71 TEMP. L.REV. at 218; see also id. at 222 (There is widespread agreement among courts and scholars today that the cost-benefit balancing test is the appropriate test for design defect.). [7] There are several ambiguities and inconsistencies in Pennsylvania's procedure, however, which render our law idiosyncratic. See Henderson and Twerski, Achieving Consensus on Defective Product Design, 83 CORNELL L.REV. at 897 (Pennsylvania has, by common agreement, developed a unique and, at times, almost unfathomable approach to products litigation.). First, in the attempt to insulate the jury from consideration of any terminology derived from or related to negligence theory, the Court has effectively relegated the core decisional aspect of strict liability cases (risk-utility balancing) to the trial judge in a role described by the Superior Court as a social philosopher and a risk-utility economic analyst. See, e.g., Fitzpatrick v. Madonna, 424 Pa.Super. 473, 476, 623 A.2d 322, 324 (1993). [8] See generally Henderson and Twerski, Achieving Consensus on Defective Product Design, 83 CORNELL L.REV. at 897 (Pennsylvania stands alone in its view that risk-utility balancing is never properly a jury function.). At the same time, the Court has maintained that it is the jury's function to resolve questions concerning the condition of the product and the truth of the plaintiffs' factual averments. See Azzarello, 480 Pa. at 556-58, 391 A.2d at 1025-26. The efforts of trial and intermediate appellate courts to reconcile these directives has led to risk-utility balancing by trial courts on the facts most favorable to the plaintiff (to avoid entangling the trial judge in determining the factual questions assigned by Azzarello to the jury), see, e.g., Fitzpatrick, 424 Pa.Super. at 475, 623 A.2d at 324, and minimalistic jury instructions (to insulate the jury from negligence terminology), which lack essential guidance concerning the nature of the central conception of product defect. [9] With regard to the role of the trial court, the concern is summarized in commentary as follows: [I]f the court is required to view the evidence on the cost-benefit factors in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, and if (as most scholars and some courts have concluded) the Azzarello instruction does not permit the jury to consider cost-benefit factors at all, then neither the court nor the jury has the authority to actually decide whether the true benefits of the proposed alternative design outweigh the true costs. In other words, under this view of the division of decisional power, neither the court nor the jury determines whether the product is in fact unreasonably dangerous or defective. ... [T]he fundamental issue of whether the incremental societal benefits of the proposed alternative design outweigh the incremental societal costs remains forever in a sort of legal limbo; trial courts are permitted to decide only whether the evidence is sufficient to submit that issue to the jury, but they are prohibited from actually submitting it. Thomas, Defining Design Defect in Pennsylvania, 71 TEMP. L.REV. at 232. With regard to the sufficiency of the jury charge, Dean Wade afforded the following perspective to the central conception of product defect: [T]he term defective raises many difficulties. Its natural application would be limited to the situation in which something went wrong in the manufacturing process, so that the article was defective in the sense that the manufacturer had not intended it to be in that condition. To apply it also to the case in which a warning is not attached to the chattel or the design turns out to be a bad one or the product is likely to be injurious in its normal condition, is to use the term in a Pickwickian sense, with a special, esoteric meaning of its own. It is not without reason that some people, in writing about it, speak of the requirement of being legally defective, including the quotation marks. To have to define the term to the jury, with a meaning completely different from the one they would normally give to it, is to create the chance that they will be misled. To use it without defining it to the jury is almost to ensure that they will be misled......... Finally, the term defective gives an illusion of certainty by suggesting a word with a purported specific meaning rather than a term connoting a standard involving the weighing of factors. Wade, On the Nature of Strict Tort Liability for Products, 44 MISS. L.J. at 831-32 (footnote omitted). [10] It is by way of reference to the state of our law as reflected above that I would answer the question concerning whether design-defect, strict products liability doctrine should be limited according to an intended user concept. While recognizing that integration of the reasonably foreseeable use alternative into strict products liability doctrine may reflect the greater consensus and better reasoned view, [11] in the landscape of our law as it presently exists, I must agree with the majority's holding that the narrowest category of cases should be subjected to such a liability scheme. [12] I BELIEVE, HOWEVER, that the above summation of Pennsylvania law demonstrates a compelling need for consideration of reasoned alternatives, such as are reflected in the position of the Third Restatement.