Court Opinion

ID: 9691443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 20:32:04.988537+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:19.799207
License: Public Domain

Boyle, J.
(concurring). I concur with Justice Weaver’s result, but I write separately to explain my rationale.
MCL 257.710e(6); MSA 9.2410(5)(6), the safety belt law, by its express terms, and consistent with the title of the Michigan Vehicle Code, limits its application to cases arising under the no-fault act, i.e., those that relate to civil liability arising out of the ownership and operation of a motor vehicle. Subsection 710e(6) of the Michigan Vehicle Code states:
Failure to wear a safety belt in violation of this section may be considered evidence of negligence and may reduce the recovery for damages arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle. However, such negligence shall not reduce the recovery for damages by more than 5%. [Emphasis added.]
In the same fashion, the no-fault act, MCL 500.3101 et seq.\ MSA 24.13101 et seq., repeatedly uses the same or similar “term of art,” i.e., “ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle.” Subsection 3101(2)© states:
“Motor vehicle accident” means a loss involving the ownership, operation, maintenance, or use of a motor vehicle as a motor vehicle regardless of whether the accident also *594involves the ownership, operation, maintenance, or use of a motorcycle as a motorcycle. [Emphasis added.]
Thus, reference in subsection 710e(6) of the Vehicle Code to recovery for damages or losses “arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle” is a direct reference to a term of art in the no-fault act.1 More significantly, as explained below, MCL 500.3135(2); MSA 24.13135(2),2 the provision providing the only statutory basis for recovery for automobile negligence after the no-fault act abolished recovery in tort, uses this same term of art. The fact that the safety belt statute tracks the language of the no-fault act demonstrates the Legislature’s clear intent to apply the five-percent limitation on reduction of damages for a plaintiff’s negligence within the context of the no-fault act. No such intent is demonstrated with respect to actions for defects in design and manufacture of an automobile. On the basis of the statutory language employed in the safety belt statute, a products liability case generally falls outside the scope of the statute. Thus, I concur with Justice Weaver’s result.3
*595The purported distinction in the dissenting opinion between “liability” and “damages” is unpersuasive. MCL 500.3135; MSA 24.13135 refers to actions “for damages.” “Liability” is a legal term of art meaning the conditions to which the law will attach consequences.4 The law will attach consequences to the failure to wear a safety belt where injuries arise out of the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle. In short, where a legal consequence (fault or liability) arises from failure to wear a safety belt, in an action “arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle,” fault or liability and damages are terms that should be interpreted consistently.5
The only possible occasion for consideration of the five-percent cap on reduction of damages for failure to wear a safety belt is where liability, i.e., the plain*596tiff’s right to damages “for noneconomic loss” beyond no-fault benefits, depends on the negligence of the other driver. Reading § 3105 (pip benefits) and subsections 3135(1) and (2) together, the negligence of the other driver is only relevant “if the injured person has suffered death, serious impairment of body function, or permanent serious disfigurement.” Subsection 3135(1). By limiting the five-percent cap in the safety belt statute to the “ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle,” thereby placing it into the context of the limited cause of action for negligence that survives the adoption of the no-fault act, the Legislature has effectively limited the safety belt nonuse damages cap to those actions arising specifically under MCL 500.3135(1); MSA 24.13135(1).6 This conclusion, however, as observed in n 3, does not compel the conclusion that, in a products liability case, evidence of the plaintiff’s negligent failure to comply with the separate requirement in the safety belt statute that requires drivers to fasten the belt would be precluded.7
*597The Legislature presumably knew what it was doing when it chose language limiting the safety belt law to the actions described in § 3135. The safety belt law does not apply separately to a manufacturer’s liability in products liability cases. The Revised Judicature Act defines “product liability action” as “an action based on a legal or equitable theory of liability brought for the death of a person or for injury to a person or damage to property caused by or resulting from the production of a product.” MCL 600.2945(h); MSA 27A.2945(h). By definition, a defendant’s liability in a products liability action is not a consequence of negligence “arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle.” MCL 257.710e(6); MSA 9.2410(5)(6). Thus, application of the safety belt statute to defendant’s liability on these facts would be error.
The dissent’s conclusion that the five-percent cap in the Vehicle Code applies to actions for products liability strains interpretation of the code and would expand the safety belt law well beyond its apparent limitations. The 1995 amendments of § 3135 added a significant limitation to an injured person’s ability to recover noneconomic losses related to death, serious impairment of body function, or permanent serious disfigurement arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of a motor vehicle. By adopting “modi*598fied comparative negligence” in subsection 2(b), the Legislature expressed its intention to limit recovery to those situations where the plaintiff is not more than fifty percent at fault for the injury causing death, serious impairment of body function, or permanent serious disfigurement. If the plaintiff is more than fifty percent at fault, no liability obtains in the plaintiff’s favor because the Legislature has eliminated the right to damages, i.e., the legal consequences, in such cases. That being the case, an injured person’s ability to recover under the statute most recently enacted and most specifically supplying the grounds for any recovery in tort after the adoption of the no-fault act, in which “tort liability arising from the ownership, maintenance, or use ... of a motor vehicle . . . was in effect abolished,” subsection 3135(3), exists only where the injured person is not more than fifty percent at fault.
However, if the Michigan Vehicle Code would trump the provisions of the RJA providing for comparative negligence in products liability cases, the same result with regard to the more directly related provisions of the current no-fault act would logically follow. Thus, not only would the safety belt law prevail over comparative negligence in the RJA for products liability cases, it would also prevail over modified comparative negligence in the current no-fault act.
As I read the safety belt law and the current no-fault act, the Legislature’s intent is as follows: If the injured person is not more than fifty percent at fault, failure to wear the safety belt will only effectuate a five-percent reduction in damages where the cause of action arises under subsections 3135(1) and (2) because of death, serious impairment of body func*599tion, or permanent serious disfigurement. However, if the injured person is found to be more than fifty percent at fault, consistent with subsection 3135(2)(b), no damages shall be assessed in favor of that person. Thus, under the amended version of the law, plaintiff here would recover nothing. The dissent’s inteipretation related to products liability cases must ultimately lead to the contrary conclusion that no damages would be assessed in favor of a person who is more than fifty percent at fault unless that fault arose out of failure to use a safety belt. In that case, an injured party who was ninety percent at fault for losses due to failure to wear a safety belt would still recover ninety-five percent of such losses despite subsection 3135(2) (b). That view clearly stretches the safety belt law far beyond its intended reach.
If the Legislature had intended that the cap on reduction of damages in the safety belt statute prevail over pure comparative negligence, it must have also intended to preclude evidence in the form of expert testimony that the plaintiff’s negligence was one hundred percent the cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. We should not lightly infer that the Legislature would, by indirection, assert a conflict with a court rule and the Court’s asserted authority regarding the admission of evidence. MRE 702.
Finally, this Court has historically encouraged factual resolution of the question of fault and its consequences for recovery by juries. To conclude that the Legislature intended a broad-based preclusion of the comparative negligence principle we adopted in Placek v Sterling Heights, 405 Mich 638; 275 NW2d 511 (1979), by its foray into safety belt usage, ascribes *600an intent not evident from the language of the statute or its history.
For these reasons, I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.
Mallett, C.J., and Brickley, J., concurred with Boyle, J.

 Cf. MCL 500.3105(1); MSA 24.13105(1); MCL 500.3106(1), (2); MSA 24.13106(1), (2); MCL 500.3121; MSA 24.13121.

 The facts giving rise to the case arose under the version of § 3135 in effect before its amendment by 1995 PA 222. Unless otherwise indicated, references herein are to the version in effect before 1995.

 Neither my reading nor Justice Weaver’s compels the conclusion that the provisions of the Michigan Vehicle Code can never be used in a products liability action. Evidence of violations of safety statutes, including those contained in the Vehicle Code, may still be admissible in products liability actions as evidence of negligence. See Klanseck v Anderson Sales & Service, Inc, 426 Mich 78, 86; 393 NW2d 356 (1986). However, the Vehicle Code, designed to regulate the liability of “owners and operators of vehicles,” was not intended to regulate the liability of a manufacturer in a products liability action by subjecting the manufacturer to liability for an owner’s or operator’s negligent operation of a motor vehicle. The dissent *595would extend the safety belt statute beyond the context of the owner’s or operator’s liability and require the manufacturer to pay for losses the jury has attributed to the conduct of the driver. Because the Vehicle Code does not contemplate regulation of manufacturer liability, such an extension of its scope would be error.

 For example, chapter 18 of the Insurance Code defines “liability” as
legal liability for damages including costs of defense, legal costs and fees, and other claims expenses because of personal injuries, property damage, or other damage or loss ....
Although this definition is not part of the chapter in which the relevant statutes appear, it exemplifies the fact that the Legislature does not subscribe to the distinction the majority observes.

 The only damages “arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle” in this litigation are the damages caused by plaintiff’s fault. To the extent that plaintiff’s damages were caused by a product defect, they do not arise out of “ownership, maintenance, or operation.” Thus, the five-percent cap would not apply. However, to the extent plaintiff’s damages were caused by her own negligence, it is appropriate to allow the jury to consider the extent to which she caused her own injuries by failing to wear her safety belt.

 In the current version of the statute, the applicability of the five-percent cap is limited to MCL 500.3135(1), (2); MSA 24.13135(1), (2), because old subsection 1 was amended and divided into subsections 1 and 2 in 1995.

 This appears to be the crucial distinction overlooked by the dissent. MCL 257.710e(3); MSA 9.2410(5)(3), a safety provision, is broad enough to allow consideration of failure to wear a safety belt in any negligence action. However, MCL 257.710e(6); MSA 9.2410(5)(6), by its express terms, limits the cap on reduction of damages for nonuse to actions that “arise[] out of the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle.” In other words, subsection 710e(3), being a safety provision, would be relevant to the consideration of the plaintiffs negligence in a products liability action under KLanseck, supra, regardless of whether the Legislature had ever enacted subsection 710e(6), because enactment of the requirement that front seat passengers wear their safety belts, subsection 710e(3), in 1985 eliminated the analytical foundation underlying the Court of Appeals decisions in Romankewiz v Black, 16 Mich App 119; 167 NW2d *597606 (1969), and Schmitzer v Misener-Bennett Ford, Inc, 135 Mich App 350; 354 NW2d 336 (1984), i.e., that there was no duty to wear a safety belt under statute or otherwise. The fact that subsection 710e(6) contains a damages-reduction cap for cases arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a motor vehicle does not affect a defendant’s ability to seek, by introduction of evidence of plaintiff’s violation of the safety provision, full reduction of damages caused by another source, e.g., a product defect.