Court Opinion

ID: 9700106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:11:01.510424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:04.580871
License: Public Domain

DUFFY, Justice
(concurring) :
I agree with the judgment of the Court and I concur in the opinion. But it seems to me desirable to particularly emphasize that the result is consistent with Delaware statutory policy which provides a remedy to third persons injured under comparable circumstances, and that it is an extrapolation of Delaware decisional law in strict tort liability to the products area. In sum, the result is completely consistent with public policy as expressed by the General Assembly, with our decisional law, with case law which has evolved in many other jurisdictions, and with the plain requirements of justice.
In my view, justice requires that an innocent third person, injured as plaintiff Dorothy Martin alleges she was, have a remedy against the person who caused those injuries. The General Assembly has not provided her with a statutory remedy but, as the opinion notes, the public policy underlying 6 Del.C. § 2-318 is broad enough to permit the Court to rely on it in our evolution of the common law. And, in principle, a bailor-lessor engaged in the business of putting motor vehicles in the stream of traffic is no different from a seller (who is bound by the statute) who does the same thing, cf. Cintrone v. Hertz Truck Leasing, etc., 45 N.J. 434, 212 A.2d 769 (1965). In addition, Delaware has applied the principle of strict tort liability over the years to varying fact situations (where damage had been done by a vicious animal, for example), and while efforts to extend the doctrine have met with mixed results in our Courts, see the comprehensive study by Chief Judge Latchum in Handy v. Uniroyal, Inc., D.Del., 327 F. Supp. 596 (1971), this case is a reasonable enlargement in the products liability field. And the case law which has emerged so rapidly in recent years in other jurisdictions certainly supports our result.