Court Opinion

ID: 9534300
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:38:28.275081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:30:14.825278
License: Public Domain

ROGOSHESKE, Justice
(dissenting).
I join Mr. Justice Kelly’s dissenting opinion, emphasizing my belief that full indemnity should continue to be allowed where liability is predicated on strict liability or breach of warranty. Where liability is based solely on findings of causal negligence of a manufacturer and a retailer or installer, I would agree with the majority that apportionment should be allowed under the policy embodied in our comparative negligence statute, Minn.St. 604.01, and that Hendrickson v. Minnesota Power & Light Co., 258 Minn. 368, 104 N.W.2d 843 (1960), should be modified accordingly. Since the liability of the manufacturer in this case was also based on findings of strict liability and breach of implied warranty, it should not be able to escape full responsibility for damages caused by its defective product solely because of the fortuity of plaintiff’s allegation of negligence and the jury’s additional finding of joint negligence for reasons so well expressed by my brother Kelly. The majority opinion, I assume, applies only where liability of the manufacturer and the retailer or installer is based on negligence, since the jury’s findings as to strict liability and breach of warranty are utterly ignored. If my assumption is incorrect and apportionment of fault is to be extended to defective product cases where liability is based on breach of warranty or strict liability, apportionment of fault would require a wholly different comparison of the fault-producing relationship between the parties. Factors such as size and technical expertise surely would be important considerations in assessing relative culpability between, for example, a large manufacturer and a small neighborhood variety store or one-man installer. I doubt that an intelligible rule or jury instruction could be fashioned which would permit a jury to apply equitable principles necessarily required to justly apportion liability. I suspect that any attempt to do so would demonstrate that the apportionment issue in cases where liability is based on other than negligence is, and should remain, one to be resolved by the court.