Court Opinion

ID: 9695947
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:31:47.810918+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:17.536658
License: Public Domain

POMEROY, Justice
(concurring).
It is by now settled that a product which is perfectly made may nonetheless be “unreasonably dangerous” if adequate warnings of the dangers involved in the use of the product are required and are not given by the seller. Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 402A, comment h; Incollingo v. Ewing, 444 Pa. 263, 287, 282 A.2d 206, 209 (1971). See also Patch v. Stanley Works (Stanley Chemical Co. Div.), 448 F.2d 483 (2nd Cir. 1971); Prosser on Torts, 659 (4th Ed., 1971; 63 Am.Jur.2d, Products Liability, § 42 at 53. I concur in the decision of the Court affirming the grant of a new trial because I am satisfied that the trial judge in his charge did not suffi*105ciently inform the jury of the need for adequate warnings, as to how the jury should determine adequacy and the consequences of inadequacy.
While the portion of the charge dealing with this subject was in general correct as far as it went, it failed to apprise the jury that where a product contains inherent dangers to human life there is a mandatory duty on the seller of the product to give warnings to the user or consumer which are adequate to inform him of such dangers, and that when such a product is sold without adequate warnings, the product is sold in a “defective condition” within the meaning of the law on strict liability.1 As the opinion of Mr. Chief Justice Jones suggests, the issue should have been put squarely to the jury whether the various warnings and directions which were in fact given by the defendant to plaintiff’s decedent, but which did not include any reference to the extremely brief time available to place the helicopter in autorotation while in climbing flight, were adequate under the circumstances.2 Stated another way, a principal issue for jury determination was whether under all the evidence the warnings “adequately conveyed [to the user] the urgency of the situation and the need to react almost instantaneously.” (Opinion announcing the decision of the court, ante at 902.)
The deficiency of the charge in this regard was, in my view, sufficiently serious to require a new trial.

. A charge substantially to this effect was requested by appellee but refused by the trial court.

. Defendant introduced expert testimony to the effect that a precise statement of time within which to achieve autorotation could not be given because the time required depended on a number of variables, such as weight of the aircraft (which is in turn related to the amount of fuel on board), the power setting and the pitch of the blades when the power failed, the angle of ascent and the reaction time of an “average” pilot.