Court Opinion

ID: 9788836
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:19:56.51553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:43:01.499883
License: Public Domain

KAUGER, J.,
with whom WATT, C.J., LAVENDER and BOUDREAU, JJ. join, concurring in result:
11 The majority responds to the certified question. Nevertheless, the angwer provided is so broad as to provide confusion rather than clarity. Read in isolation, the answer is so encompassing as to swallow the rule of 47 00.98.2001 § 12-420 1 that generally the use or nonuse of seat belts is not proper evidentiary material for submission in a civil suit in Oklahoma.2 Neither the practicing bar nor the bench should read the majority to con*212done the admission of evidence of the use or non-use of seat belts in all manufacturer's products liability erashworthiness cases.
12 Although the body of the opinion narrows the broad answer contained in the action clause, in the opinion's opening paragraph and in the conclusion of the majority opinion, to conform the answer to the question certified with the applicable law stated in the opinion, the question should be answered as follows:
"Title 47 0.98.2001 § 12-420 prohibits the introduction of the use or non-use of seat belts to impute negligence or fault to a person electing not to wear a seat belt. Nevertheless, if the driver brings a manufacturer's products liability cause which implicates the seat's entire occupant restraint system, the introduction of use or non-use is controlled by our pronouncement in Bishop v. Takata Corp.,3 2002 [2000] OK 74, 12 P.3d 45 [459]. However, before evidence of the use or non-use of a seat belt may be introduced, the manufacturer must demonstrate that the erashwor-thiness of the device claimed to be defective by the plaintiff is so integrated with the seat's entire occupant restraint system as to require consideration of the allegedly defective device and the seat's entire occupant restraint system as one unit."

. Title 47 0.$.2001 § 12-420 provides:
''Nothing in this act shall be used in any civil proceeding in this state and the use or nonuse of seat belts shall not be submitted into evidence in any civil suit in Oklahoma."

. The concurring opinion goes well beyond the question certified. The "additional analysis" is utilized to broaden the range of cases in which seat belt evidence may be admitted. . The author of the concurring opinion would allow evidence of the use or nonuse of seat belts in all manufacturer's products liability causes whether or not the seat's restraint system was called into question by the plaintiff. I am unconvinced that 47 ©.S.2001 § 12-420, see note 1, supra, today's opinion or any of this Court's jurisprudence requires such a broad and all encompassing result. Certainly, there is nothing in the language of the statute that would require it be applied to negligence only cases as the concurrence indicates.
The concurrence cites Bishop v. Takata Corp., see note 3, infra, for the proposition that its language indicates that 47 O.S.2001, § 12-240, see note 1, supra, is not a part of Oklahoma's "substantive" law. The opinion does not address this issue. It's holding is clearly stated in T2 providing in pertinent part:
"... The question is answered as follows: although the Act prevents a person from being penalized in a civil proceeding for choosing not to wear a seat belt, it does not prohibit the introduction of evidence of the use or nonuse of seat belts in a manufacturers' liability action for a defective seat belt restraint system."
It does not, as the author of the concurring opinion leads the reader to believe, contain any language indicating the seat belt statute will be inapplicable in all manufacturers' products liability cases.

. In Bishop v. Takata Corp., 2000 OK 71, 12 P.3d 459, we were asked to answer the certified question: whether 47 O.S.2001 § 12-420 prohibited the admissibility of evidence of the "use or non-use of a seat belt ... in any civil suit in Oklahoma" for a manufacturers' products liability claim based on a defective seat belt restraint system. We answered and determined that the statute prevented a person from being penalized in a civil proceeding for choosing not to wear a seat belt. However, it did not prohibit the introduction of evidence of the use or nonuse of seat belts in manufacturers' liability actions for a defective seat belt restraint system.