Court Opinion

ID: 9777152
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:00:42.136656+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:49.530999
License: Public Domain

*389BLACKMAR, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in Judge Billings’ opinion, and write separately primarily in response to Judge Welliver’s dissent.
I.
Section 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts is not statutory law. Nor does it answer all the questions which may be presented by future cases. I disagree with Judge Welliver’s suggestion that we should lay down a rule for future cases involving different facts. I prefer the traditional common law practice of case-by-case development of the law. Maybe there will be more reversals if we decline to decide issues not before us, but the alternative of broad judicial legislation is a less desirable one.
Under our system of jury practice, instructions are given in bare outline. Much reliance is placed on counsel’s opportunity to argue. As the principal opinion points out, “the concept of unreasonable danger ... is presented to the jury on an ultimate issue without further definition.” I believe that the evidence amply supports the submission of “defective condition unreasonably dangerous” with regard to the replacement actuators furnished by Beech. Also, Beech could reasonably anticipate that the people who install its replacement parts will not always act carefully, and may not always make continuing reference to the manual. Instruction # 10 gave both the plaintiffs and Beech ample opportunity to argue their respective positions. The instruction properly submitted the ultimate issues.
I am not certain that the unadorned submission of unreasonable danger as an ultimate issue is appropriate for all products liability cases. I have particular reservation in cases in which a product has apparent social utility and cannot be made wholly safe. But no such issue is presented here. Beech had the means of correcting the defective condition. There was no social utility in the product as manufactured.
II.
The submission under Instruction # 12, based on failure to warn, is also appropriate. The plaintiffs, of course, had no way of knowing which, if either, of their theories might find favor in the eyes of the jury.
Judge Welliver’s argument that a “failure to warn” submission is appropriate only if the jury is required to find that the defendant “knew or should have known” of the danger is particularly inappropriate in this case, in which Beech manufactured the replacement parts and is charged with knowledge of their properties, including the holes of its design which they fit. Jury instruction is required only on genuinely disputed issues of fact. This is not a case in which an unknown danger presents itself in a product, such as a medicine previously assumed to be safe and beneficial. Instruction # 12 properly permitted the jury to argue the issue of absence of warning.
The absence of warning, or means of ready differentiation of the right and left actuators, is a circumstance which might induce the jury to believe that the replacement parts were “unreasonably dangerous.” I agree with Judge Billings that there is no utility in introducing concepts of foreseeability into this case, and that the result is in line with Elmore v. Owens-Illinois, Inc., 673 S.W.2d 434 (Mo. banc 1984). We need not speculate about what submission might be required when a useful product is found to present previously unanticipated dangers.1
III.
Our courts perhaps should consider whether an instruction on present worth of future loss, as required in FELA cases by St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co. v. Dickerson, — U.S.-, 105 S.Ct. 1347, 1349, 84 L.Ed.2d 303 (1985), should be *390made available in other civil actions. In Bair v. St. Louis-San Francisco Ry. Co., 647 S.W.2d 507 (Mo. banc 1983), however, we held that the parties may argue the present value issues without evidence, because it is a matter of common knowledge. The issues may also be raised by evidence.
Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 63 properly shows gross figures. I agree with the holding in the principal opinion that the defendants failed to take appropriate and available steps to put these figures in perspective and cannot now complain about the reception of the exhibit into evidence, or argument based on it.
I join in the principal opinion and in the judgment of affirmance.

. Judge Welliver cites Feldman v. Lederle Laboratories, 97 N.J. 429, 479 A.2d 374 (1984). This case treats of warnings required in cases involving drugs and other beneficial products which are "unavoidably unsafe,” and so is not in point.