Court Opinion

ID: 9852490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:31:23.824785+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:28.624162
License: Public Domain

LANDAU, J.,
dissenting.
Defendant was asked to install an acrylic surface on an existing concrete floor located in a bakery. Defendant did so, applying off-the-shelf products, each of which performed as manufactured. The problem was that defendant either selected the wrong materials or misapplied them, and the surface that resulted was too slippery for safe use in a bakery. Plaintiff slipped on the acrylic surface and injured her *565back. She sued defendant, alleging as her sole theory of liability that defendant was strictly liable for installing an unreasonably dangerous product: a slippery floor. The issue before us is whether defendant’s apparently negligent installation of acrylic materials that otherwise performed as specified supports a claim for strict product liability. The majority concludes that it does. I respectfully disagree. In my view, the facts in this case might support a claim for negligence, but they do not support a claim for strict product liability.
Four decisions provide the universe of relevant Oregon precedents from which we may derive principles to control the disposition of this case. The first is Markle v. Mulholland’s, Inc., 265 Or 259, 509 P2d 529 (1973). In that case, the plaintiff purchased a tire, which had previously been recapped. After an accident, the plaintiff sued the recap-per, the wholesaler and the retailer of the tire. The Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs claim for strict product liability against all of the defendants could be submitted to the jury. Id. at 271.
The second decision is Hoover v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 270 Or 498, 528 P2d 76 (1974), another defective tire case. The plaintiff purchased four tires from the defendant Montgomery Ward. The plaintiff was later injured in an automobile accident. She sued Montgomery Ward both in negligence and in strict product liability, alleging that Montgomery Ward had failed properly to tighten the lug nuts on one of the wheels when it installed the new tires. The trial court did not allow the strict liability claim to go to the jury. The Supreme Court affirmed. The court characterized the issue before it, and its disposition, in the following terms:
“This case presents the question of whether the definition of ‘dangerously defective product’ should be expanded to include within the scope of strict liability the negligent installation of a nondefective product. We have found no court which has stretched the doctrine of strict liability in tort to this extreme, and we decline to do so.
“In the instant case it is obvious that the product sold to plaintiff was not dangerously defective. Even if we accepted plaintiffs version of the cause of the accident, it was not a *566dangerously defective tire which caused plaintiffs injuries, but rather the installation of the wheel on the hub and axle of the auto.”
Id. at 501-02.
The third relevant decision is this court’s in Jamison v. Spencer R.V. Center, Inc., 98 Or App 529, 779 P2d 1091 (1989). In that case, the plaintiff purchased from the defendant a travel trailer and a trailer hitch to tow it. The defendant installed the hitch. That process included assembling the component parts, including welding the parts together and to the plaintiffs truck. One of the welds apparently failed, and the plaintiff was injured in an accident. Over eight years later, the plaintiff sued the defendant for negligence; he asserted no strict liability claim. The defendant moved for summary judgment on the ground that the plaintiff had asserted a strict liability claim well after the eight-year statute of ultimate repose for product liability claims had run. After noting that the product liability statute embraced product claims premised both in negligence and in strict liability, we concluded that the plaintiffs claim was indeed one for a defective product, a trailer hitch that had been negligently assembled. Id. at 531-33. In a footnote, we went on to add, by way of dictum, that
“[w]e do not distinguish defects created in the assembly of the trailer hitch from those made in the installation. The * * * ‘instructional guide,’ included in the summary judgment record, required the installer to customize each installation to the make and model of each car. The seller’s role in assembling the hitch is comparable to that of a manufacturer.”
Id. at 533 n 1.
The final decision is Watts v. Rubber Tree, Inc., 118 Or App 557, 848 P2d 1210, rev den 317 Or 272 (1993), another defective tire case. A passenger was injured when he was thrown out of a truck after the driver lost control as a result of a blown tire. The tire previously had been taken to a recapper, which had installed a new surface on the used tire. The tire to be recapped contained a defect that hampered adhesion of the new tire tread. Unfortunately, the recapper did not notice the defect in the casing. The guardian of the *567injured passenger sued, among others, the recapper, asserting that the recapper was strictly liable for injuries caused by the recapped tire. The trial court declined to allow that claim to be submitted to the jury. On appeal, the plaintiff guardian argued that the case was controlled by Markle. We disagreed:
“In Markle, the defendant, a tire recapper, sold the plaintiff a recapped tire. * * * At issue was whether the defendants were strictly liable for injuries caused by a sold recapped tire. The Supreme Court adopted the theories of enterprise liability and representational liability as the basis for the law of strict product liability, and concluded that there was sufficient evidence to permit a jury to infer that the recapped tire was unreasonably dangerous.
“This case is different. Defendant did not sell the defective casing. [The owner of the tire] asked defendant to recap the tires it supplied. Defendant merely provided a service when it affixed the new tread to the casing.”
Watts, 118 Or App at 562-63 (emphasis in original).
The plaintiff nonetheless argued that the recapper had, in fact, sold a product, which she identified as a recapped tire, including “the sale of labor,” technical “know-how” and “a process that is beyond the consumer’s ability to duplicate.” Id. at 563. We rejected that argument, too, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Hoover, and concluded that the trial court had correctly refused to submit the claim to the jury. Id. at 563-64.
From the foregoing authorities, I derive a basic rule: Strict product liability will lie only for sale of a defective product; negligent installation of an otherwise nondefective product does not suffice. The key is the determination of whether the product itself, as opposed to its installation, is the source of the injury. Thus, in Markle, the plaintiff purchased a product, a tire, which was defective, and the court held that a claim for strict liability for defects in the tire could be sent to a jury. In contrast, in Hoover and in Watts, the defendants provided only services, installing and recapping tires respectively, and the courts held that strict liability could not be asserted.
In my view, the facts of this case are analogous to those in Hoover and Watts. The bakery owned a concrete *568floor, which it wanted resurfaced with acrylic. Defendant applied the acrylic, which performed as specified by the manufacturer in all respects. The floor nevertheless proved too slippery for bakery use, but not because of any defect in the acrylic or other materials that defendant applied. Instead, the defect arose either from defendant’s negligent selection of materials in the first place or from its negligent application of those materials onsite. In short, as in Hoover and Watts, we are confronted with injuries that arose out of negligent installation of a product but not a defect in the product itself. Such facts do not give rise to strict product liability.
The majority concludes otherwise, on the basis of Jamison, in which we said that an assembler of a trailer hitch may be held liable as if a manufacturer. The decision, however, offers support for the majority’s position only if it is assumed at the outset that what the bakery in this case purchased was a product. In Jamison, the plaintiff purchased a product, an assembled trailer hitch, which the defendant improperly welded. What the plaintiff then received was a product, a trailer hitch, which was defective. The majority apparently assumes that what the bakery purchased also was a product: a new floor. I disagree. The bakery already had a floor, a concrete one, the same concrete one that it had used for many years. What the bakery purchased from defendant was the selection and application of a new surface on the existing floor. That constituted the provision of a service, as in Watts, where the defendant applied a new surface on an existing tire casing. Indeed, if the majority is correct, then Watts was probably incorrectly decided, for if the bakery purchased a “new floor” in this case, it stands to reason that the owner of the bald tire in Watts purchased a “newly-recapped tire” as well, an argument that we explicitly rejected in that case. Watts, 118 Or at 563.
That the resurfacing of the bakery’s concrete floor cannot be considered a product is borne out by the consequences of the majority’s view. For example, if the negligent resurfacing of a concrete floor in this case gives rise to strict liability, will the negligent refinishing of an oak floor— because, say, the refinisher selects the wrong finish, which otherwise performs as specified — give rise to such liability as *569well? If not, why not? I can think of no principled distinction between applying a new finish to a concrete floor and a wood one. If the negligent refinishing of a wood floor as described does give rise to strict product liability, then does the negligent application of the wrong house paint to house siding? Again, if not, why not? I can think of no reason to support any difference in result. Yet I find it hard to believe that anyone would assert that negligent selection or application of the wrong house paint, which otherwise performs as manufactured, gives rise to strict product liability for any damage that results.
In short, I disagree with the majority’s asserted analogy to Jamison as a basis for extending strict product liability to the negligent installation of a product. I read that decision to be distinguishable and find more persuasive an analogy to Hoover and to Watts. I would hold that the trial court erred in allowing plaintiffs strict product liability claim to go to the jury in this case and respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to the contrary on that issue.