Court Opinion

ID: 9493245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:02:03.783833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:43.495299
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
My colleagues’ resolution of the primary issue in this appeal rests on the premise that a risk is not a matter of “common knowledge” unless the public has a relatively precise understanding of the degree of risk. It seems to me that this sets the bar too high. The record before us shows that a significant link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was well known during the years that Mr. Tompkin smoked, and I therefore agree with the district court that the “common knowledge” doctrine bars Mrs. Tompkin’s design defect and failure to warn claims. In addition, my reading of the Ohio Products Liability Act compels the conclusion that Mrs. Tompkin’s claim for breach of an implied warranty — like her claims of negligence and willful misconduct — can no longer be maintained under the common law. Because there is no contrary consensus in the Ohio courts, I would affirm the summary judgment on that claim as well. In all other respects I concur in the majority opinion.
I
The factual record in this case clearly establishes that the public has long understood cigarette smoking to be unhealthful. More particularly, the undisputed evidence demonstrates that most Americans were aware by the late 1950’s that cigarette smoking can cause lung cancer. As the majority sees it, however, this awareness does not amount to “common knowledge” of the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer absent evidence that the public *577understood — with some undefined, but substantial, degree of specificity — the closeness of that link. I respectfully disagree. In my view, the “common knowledge” doctrine incorporated in the Ohio Products Liability Act requires widespread recognition that a non-negligible risk exists, but it does not require detailed understanding of the magnitude of that risk.
The relevant sections of the Ohio Product Liability Act are codified at §§ 2307.75(E) and 2307.76(B) of the Ohio Revised Code. Section 2307.75(E) provides that “[a] product is not defective in design or formulation if the harm for which the claimant seeks to recover ... was caused by an inherent characteristic of the product ... which is recognized by the ordinary person with the ordinary knowledge common to the community.” That is, if the harm-causing characteristic of a product — in this case, cigarettes’ carcinogenicity — is a matter of common knowledge, then a design defect claim based on that characteristic cannot succeed. Similarly, § 2307.76(B) provides that “[a] product is not defective due to [lack of or inadequate warning] as a result of the failure of its manufacturer to warn or instruct about an open and obvious risk or a risk that is a matter of common knowledge.”
As I read these statutory provisions, they say nothing about the magnitude of the risk or the likelihood that an inherent characteristic such as carcinogenicity will actually cause harm in a given case. Of course, the chance of harm must be something more than negligible — otherwise, the risk would not be regarded as a risk at all. But public awareness that the product presents a specific and appreciable danger, without any more detailed knowledge of that danger’s nature or extent, would seem sufficient, under the Act, to preclude recovery.
Ohio cases applying §§ 2307.75(E) and 2307.76(B) appear consistent with my reading of the statutory language. In Gawloski v. Miller Brewing Co., 96 Ohio App.3d 160, 644 N.E.2d 731, 733, appeal not allowed, 71 Ohio St.3d 1411, 641 N.E.2d 1110 (1994), the court held that the dangers of alcohol use, including the risk of alcoholism, are “within the body of knowledge common to the community.” In so holding the court made no finding that the public has any substantial understanding of the likelihood that alcohol use will lead to alcoholism. Knowledge that a significant risk exists was enough to preclude liability. Similarly, in Hanlon v. Lane, 98 Ohio App.3d 148, 648 N.E.2d 26, 30 (1994), appeal not allowed, 71 Ohio St.3d 1491, 646 N.E.2d 467 (1995), the court found “the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning from the use of an improperly vented gas furnace” to be a matter of common knowledge — and did so without addressing the public’s understanding of the frequency with which such poisonings might be expected to occur. Again, in Nadel v. Burger King Corp., 119 Ohio App.3d 578, 695 N.E.2d 1185, 1191-92, appeal not allowed, 80 Ohio St.3d 1415, 684 N.E.2d 706 (1997) — a case in which the court reversed a summary judgment that had been based on the “common knowledge” doctrine — the court did not discuss the magnitude of the risk at issue. The question held to be for the jury in that case was whether the public is aware that a particular risk exists — ie., whether it is commonly known that “second-degree burns can result from spilled [fast-food] coffee.” Id. at 1191. There is a difference, it seems to me, between common knowledge that a particular harm is within the range of reasonably possible outcomes and common knowledge of the degree of probability that a particular harm will in fact ensue. So far as I am aware, the Ohio courts have never required the latter when applying §§ 2307.75(E) and 2307.76(B).
Accordingly, it seems to me that the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer could have been a matter of “common knowledge” under the Ohio Products Liability Act regardless of whether the public knew that “cigarette smoking is a strong precipitant of lung cancer.” Maj. Op. at *578572 (emphasis added). If the public knew that cigarette smoking can cause cancer, and that the risk is not insignificant, that is enough for the “common knowledge” doctrine to bar Mrs. Tompkin’s claims of design defect and failure to warn. Nothing in the Ohio code or case law suggests a requirement that the magnitude of the risk be known with any greater specificity.
In this case, to repeat, the record establishes that the public did know, between 1950 and 1965, that cigarette smoking presents a significant risk of lung cancer. In particular, the appellees’ expert testified without contradiction that
“[a]fter World War II, all major Ohio newspapers (including the Akron Beacon Journal) published the same anti-smoking information in the 1950s and 1960s that was in keeping with the uniform national media coverage about the dangers of tobacco use. Headlines in the Akron newspapers, for example, proclaimed: ‘U.S. Warns of Cigaret [sic] Cancer Link,’ and ‘Cigarets DO Cut Life’s Length.’ ... Anyone reading the headlines in Ohio newspapers during these decades could not have missed the message: smoking was linked to lung cancer.
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Beginning in the late 1930s physicians began to report that most of their lung cancer patients were cigarette smokers.... In 1954 the media widely reported on a study ... demonstrating a statistical link between heavy smoking and lung cancer.
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It became next to impossible to. be a literate American in the 1950s and not be aware of the numerous scientific reports and government Statements linking smoking to lung cancer.
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[B]y the summer of 1954 almost ninety (89.9) percent of the general public had ‘heard or read [something] recently to the effect that cigarette smoking may be [a] cause of cancer of the lung.’ By the summer of 1957 almost eighty percent had heard or read about the American Cancer Society’s report linking lung cancer with smoking. As early as 1960, ninety-seven percent of all high school students believed that there was a connection between lung cancer and smoking .... ”
It is logically possible, I suppose, to read such evidence and conclude that the public was aware of the risk that cigarette smoking can cause lung cancer but believed the risk to be insignificant. In my view, such a conclusion would be unreasonable. The link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was reported with a frequency and an intensity that would have suggested to any rational observer that the risk was not negligible. The public would not have expected the attention of physicians, scientists, and government officials to be captured so extensively by a remote, insignificant danger. The undisputed facts appear to me to establish common knowledge of a significant link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
I do not think that my application of Ohio law to the facts of this case is inconsistent with other courts’ applications of state “common knowledge” doctrines in cases involving cigarette smoking. The majority relies heavily on Burton v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 884 F.Supp. 1515, 1526 (D.Kan.1995), in which the court rejected an argument that “because there is general common knowledge that cigarettes are dangerous, users of cigarettes are therefore imputed with knowledge of the extent and nature of all dangers relating to cigarettes.” The court’s point was not that “common knowledge” entails substantial awareness of the magnitude of a particular risk. The point, rather, was that common knowledge of some risks associated with cigarette smoking does not necessarily imply common knowledge of all risks associated with cigarette smoking (such as the *579risk of addiction). See id. at 1525-26.1 Moreover, in Burton as well as in Hill v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 44 F.Supp.2d 837, 844 (W.D.Ky.1999), and Guilbeault v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 84 F.Supp.2d 263, 270-75 (D.R.I.2000), the court was asked to make a determination as to “common knowledge” without the benefit of a factual record.2 None of these cases suggests that a record such as that developed here — i.e., a record demonstrating widespread public awareness of the existence, though not the magnitude, of a non-negligible risk — is insufficient to establish “common knowledge” of that risk.
In sum, I believe that the majority answers the wrong question when it decides that “a rational factfinder could reasonably conclude that the public did not have ‘common knowledge’ of the strong connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer between 1950 and 1965.” Maj. Op. at 575 (emphasis added). Whether the public appreciated the full strength of the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer may well be open to doubt, but the relevant question is whether that connection itself — i.e., the fact that cigarette smoking is a significant cause of lung cancer — was a matter of common knowledge during the years at issue. On the undisputed evidence before us, a reasonable factfinder could only conclude that it was. I would therefore affirm the summary judgment on Mrs. Tompkin’s failure to warn and design defect claims.
II
Were one to look only at the text of the Ohio Products Liability Act, it would seem obvious that Mrs. Tompkin’s claim for breach of an implied warranty may be pursued only within that statutory framework, and not as a common-law cause of action. Section 2307.73(A) provides that a manufacturer may be held liable on a “product liability claim” only if the plaintiff establishes the statutory requirements for liability. “[Pjroduct liability claim” is defined in § 2307.71(M) as
“a claim asserted in a civil action ... that seeks to recover compensatory damages from a manufacturer or supplier for death, physical injury to a person, emotional distress, or physical damage to property other than the product involved, that allegedly arose from any of the following:
(1) The design, formulation, production, construction, creation, assembly, rebuilding, testing, or marketing of that product;
(2) Any warning or instruction, or lack of warning or instruction, associated with that product;
(3) Any failure of that product to conform to any relevant representation or warranty.” (Emphasis added.)
This language seems plainly to say that a claim based on breach of an implied warranty is a “product liability claim” that is governed exclusively by the Ohio Products Liability Act.
The majority reaches a contrary conclusion on the basis of the court of appeals’ decision in White v. DePuy, Inc., 129 Ohio App.3d 472, 718 N.E.2d 450, 454-56 (1998). In my view, White is not controlling. In Nadel v. Burger King Corp., 695 N.E.2d at 1189-90, another Ohio court of appeals held, applying §§ 2307.73(A) and 2307.71(M), that the Ohio Products Liabili*580ty Act has preempted common-law claims based on implied warranties. No decision of the Ohio Supreme Court has resolved this conflict within the Ohio courts of appeals. The White court relied on Carrel v. Allied Products Corp., 78 Ohio St.3d 284, 677 N.E.2d 795 (1997), an Ohio Supreme Court decision holding that the Act preempts only those claims that it “specifically eover[s],” but (as the majority notes, Maj. Op. at 575) the only claim at issue there was a claim of negligent design. Carrel therefore does not compel the conclusion that other product claims may proceed under the common law. In fact, the Nadel court expressly acknowledged Carrel but determined that that decision did not control the question before it. See Nadel, 695 N.E.2d at 1190 n. 4. Given the lack of controlling precedent and the persuasive statutory analysis in Nadel, I believe that this court is free to apply §§ 2307.73(A) and 2307.71(M) as written. I would therefore affirm the summary judgment on Mrs. Tompkin’s implied warranty claim.

. Like the court in Burton, other courts refusing to apply the "common knowledge” doctrine have done so when the alleged harm was addiction rather than disease in the ordinary sense. See Guilbeault v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 84 F.Supp.2d 263, 270-72 (D.R.I.2000) (discussing cases).

. In Guilbeault, after declining to take judicial notice as to the public’s knowledge of the risks of cigarette smoking before 1964, the court noted that "there is extensive evidence that the health dangers of smoking were well known” before 1964 and that "a more expansive application of the common knowledge doctrine may well be available on a motion for summary judgment.” See Guilbeault, 84 F.Supp.2d at 274.