Court Opinion

ID: 9728379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:06:35.115451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:48.226133
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HARRISON, also concurring in part and dissenting in part: I agree with the majority’s conclusions regarding the first two certified questions. I disagree with its response to the third question, which asks whether the airframe and engine constitute a single product or are actually two distinct products. As a preliminary matter, I question whether this court should even have addressed that question. Supreme Court Rule 20 (145 111. 2d R. 20) gives this court discretion to answer certified questions of law. Question three, however, does not present a legal question. What it asks us to do is apply the legal principle at issue in question two to the particular facts of this case. That is a matter the federal court should be able to manage without our help. The purpose of Rule 20 is to give the federal courts direction on unsettled questions of Illinois law, not to decide specific cases for them. That aside, the majority’s analysis is unpersuasive. Pratt & Whitney’s engine was used with the airframe, but was not part of it. As the majority details, the engine was freely removable and interchangeable. It was separately certified and warranted and was maintained independently of the airframe. How the engine could reasonably be characterized as a mere component of the airframe under these circumstances I do not understand. The airframe and engine were, in fact, two separate products, as both of the two United States district judges who have thus far considered the issue correctly recognized. JUSTICE McMORROW joins in this partial concurrence and partial dissent.