Court Opinion

ID: 9578592
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:46:42.144233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:50.762501
License: Public Domain

Fletcher, Chief Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the majority’s conclusion that “use”, at least insofar as the word “use” means actually operating the allegedly defective product, is not a predicate to liability under Georgia law. I write separately because finding that “use” is not a predicate to liability for a defectively designed product does not mean that a plaintiff in a defective design case, who has presented a reasonable, safer, alterna*119tive design, automatically is entitled to a jury trial. Georgia law does not require, and the Court is not adopting a rule today, that manufacturers of products must always undergo a jury trial before being absolved of liability for alleged design defects. A person is not entitled to a jury trial just because she trips and falls on a chair, coffee table, or other household item and sustains a severe injury. Manufacturers do not need to make all household products rounded, plastic, and padded.
Decided July 16, 2001.
As this Court has stated, adoption of the risk/utility test in Banks v. ICI Americas10 “does not mean that adjudication as a matter of law is no longer appropriate in any case in which a design defect is alleged.”11 Georgia law does not require manufacturers to ensure that the designs of their products are incapable of producing injury.12 When a plaintiff falls onto a product that was not being operated, did not cause the plaintiffs fall, and had no role other than being the object upon which the plaintiff landed, then the trial court should consider strongly whether summary judgment is appropriate. Manufacturers should not have to ensure, as part of the risks that they must foresee in choosing a design, that their products are safe from persons who collide by happenstance with their products. Otherwise, all manufacturers of products intended for use in the home, from tables to lamps to chairs to exercise machines, will be faced with a jury trial every time someone trips and lands on those items.
Finally, even though “use” is not a prerequisite to liability, “use”, whether defined narrowly to mean actual operation or more broadly to encompass the ways in which the product could be utilized, may still be considered in balancing the risk versus the utility of the allegedly defective design.13 For instance, whether the exercise machine was being operated versus sitting dormant in the recreational room versus stored away in the attic may affect how the risk of the allegedly defective design balances against the utility of that design. Likewise, use remains a part of determining whether a product was merchantable and reasonably suited for its intended uses at the time of sale.14
*120Doffermyre, Shields, Canfield, Knowles & Devine, Foy R. Devine, for appellants.
Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, Daniel A. Ragland, Timothy Pramas, Patricia Yoedicke, for appellees.

 264 Ga. 732 (450 SE2d 671) (1994).

 Ogletree v. Navistar Int’l Transp. Corp., 271 Ga. 644, 646 (522 SE2d 467) (1999).

 See Banks, 264 Ga. at 737.

 Banks v. ICI Americas, 264 Ga. 732, 736 n. 6 (listing non-exhaustive list of factors, including usefulness of product, gravity and severity of danger posed by design, likelihood of that danger, avoidability of danger).

 See OCGA § 51-1-11 (b) (1).