Court Opinion

ID: 9752242
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:52:00.297532+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:11.758977
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority that evidence of subsequent design change is generally inadmissible to show design defect in a product liability case. For two reasons, I disagree that the testimony of Langston Corporation’s expert witness put in issue the question of feasibility, thereby invoking the exception to the general rule.
First, I believe it is inconsistent to give the term “feasibility” a broad definition and then suggest that it “be applied cautiously” to prevent it from overwhelming the general rule. Opinion at 554. I suspect that both attorneys and trial judges will be confounded in attempting to move in both directions at once, and application of the rule (and the exception) will provide fuel for contentious litigation in both the common pleas and appellate courts.
The citations to cases from other jurisdictions, given as examples of when the rule controls and when the exception, offer little guidance, especially in light of the result in the present case. To my mind, Langston’s expert witness here “arguefd] about tradeoffs involved in taking precautionary measures,” opinion at 555, yet this is the type of situation *562where the majority suggests that the feasibility exception does not apply. In like fashion, one strains to discern how that same expert’s testimony can be described as being “framed in categorical terms [or] presented in the form of superlatives,” id., which the majority proposes as the basis for applying the exception.1
Second, even assuming it has fashioned an appropriate definition of feasibility with the intention that it be applied cautiously, the majority, in examining the record to determine the result in this case, commits the fundamental error of taking excerpts from testimony out of context, in disregard of the import of the testimony as a whole. As ably demonstrated by Madame Justice Newman’s Dissenting Opinion, which I join, it was the Duchesses who were responsible for raising the feasibility issue, not Langston. To the extent that Langston’s expert witness addressed the feasibility issue, it was by way of response to the plaintiffs’ evidence. Even then, according to a fair reading in context, it is plainly nothing more than “argument about tradeoffs involved in taking precautionary measures,” as noted above.
The majority in effect has allowed the plaintiff to set a trap which the defendant has no hope of avoiding; either the plaintiffs’ assertions regarding feasibility must be left unchallenged, or they may be addressed, in which case it will be held that the defendant “raised a substantial feasibility question under the general definition of the term.” Opinion at 558.
Because the majority’s exposition of the contours of the exception harbors the potential for much mischief, and because its application of the exception in this case is based on a reading of the record that unfairly characterizes the evidence, I respectfully dissent.

. The majority also offers that the exception could come into play where "a defendant’s evidence and arguments ... upset the balance of fairness that Rule 407 seeks to maintain.” Opinion at 555. This amorphous language seemingly creates an option for the trial court to exercise its discretion in standardless fashion "in the interest of fairness”, which if exercised would undoubtedly be a case of the exception swallowing the rule.