Court Opinion

ID: 9641726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:39:09.763781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:39.430854
License: Public Domain

Lowe, J.,

dissenting:

At the risk of projecting the image of a recusant while still in my judicial novitiate, I am compelled to express my disaffection with my brothers’ aversion to placing the responsibility for the proper design and construction of automobiles upon their manufacturers. In doing so I thank my brother Menchine for so adequately setting forth the language of Larsen v. General Motors Corp., 391 F. 2d 495. To avoid repetition, suffice to say I adopt the rationale of that case and commend it for rereading.
One finds it difficult, however, to dispute the platitude with which Larsen’s antipode, Evans v. General Motors *541Corp., 359 F. 2d 822, commences in an effort to lay its foundation:
“the intended purpose of an automobile does not include its participation in collisions with other objects.” 1
Evans then summarily releases the manufacturer from responsibility for a design defect intensifying (if not causing) the injury, though not the original collision. The manufacturer is absolved of any responsibility even though the danger of the injury was “clearly a foreseeable danger arising out of the intended use.” Prosser, Law of Torts (1971 Ed.), p. 646. Small wonder Professor Prosser refers to this limitation of liability as “rather specious” in its rationale. More to the point, we think it is the vestige of an “anachronism” based upon an era when motor cars were luxuries.2
Recognizing contemporary society’s total reliance upon motor vehicles, we cannot in these times turn our backs upon the dangers incident to their use to which we have become subjugated.
“Between one-fourth and two thirds of all vehicles manufactured are at some time during their subsequent use involved in the tragedy of human injury and death. Consequently the anticipation of this result by both designer and manufacturer is mandatory.”3
*542The majority fears that to eschew the second-collision doctrine would be to equate the manufacturer’s liability with boundless forseeability. My brothers could exorcise that fear by considering that the victims of such injury must still persuade the fact-finder that the design was defective; that it was unreasonably so and the defect was the proximate cause of the injury. The plaintiff here does not — nor could one in the future — proceed on the expectation of an “accident proof’ car, but must point to the specific foreseeable faults.
The majority opinion points out that Evans “grounded (its) decision essentially upon the precepts of Campo v. Scofield, 95 N.E.2d 802 [N.Y. 1950]____” This hardy foundation involved the duty of a manufacturer to equip an “onion topping machine” with a safety guard. Even assuming, though not conceding, Campo to be good law, the analogy to the standard of care owed in the manufacture of an automobile leaves something to be desired. The devastation caused by a defectively designed automobile, unleashed upon a society so totally dependent upon that vehicle, leads one to conjure catastrophies of gigantic proportions, hardly commensurate with those we foresee being caused by a defective “onion topper.” The limited number of persons who have so much as seen an onion topping machine is paralleled only by the number of those who read dissenting opinions written for schismatic minorities.
My brother Menchine struck a sensitive chord by recommending a legislative solution to the problem. I accept that recommendation with alacrity, yet while awaiting those solutions I am reminded by Judge Kiley in his forceful Evans dissent that:
“ ... the possibility of future adequate legislative standards does not remove the necessity of presently deciding whether plaintiff should or should not have an opportunity to prove the allegations made in the complaint.”
Juror’s judgments would, at best, provide invaluable indicia *543of consumer expectations to those legislators formulating standards, and, at worst, would provide a spur to the representatives of the people to get on with their task.
Finally, were I as convinced as my brethren that the Court of Appeals “foreclosed totally” the question before us in Myers and Blankenship, I would assume the role more becoming me — a role of silence.4 Those decisions, turning on the distinction between latent and patent defects, do not convince me that they are authority for the principle that the “proper use” of an automobile may not take into account collisions and injuries clearly foreseeable as an incident to its normal use. Nor does Blankenship's allegedly dangerous “sanforizing machine” do much to persuade me by analogy.
The second count in Blankenship charging breach of warranty as the proximate cause of the injury was dismissed as not persuasive because of lack of privity between the parties. In considering that peremptory dismissal we might now assess the policy direction taken by the Maryland Legislature since Blankenship. In 1969 the Legislature eliminated the privity prerequisite between manufacturers and buyers in warranty cases. Md. Code, Art. 95B § 2-314, (Laws of Md. 1969, Ch. 249). The ratio legis underlying that enactment recognizes for the first time a manufacturer’s direct responsibility to the consumer. We would do well to apply that twentieth century concept to automobile architects who design vehicles with defects causing injuries which were reasonably foreseeable.
The Court of Appeals is seldom equivocal. When they speak on this question, have no fear that we need strain to interpret their position; a position which may well cause me to regret having held out the added inducement of my future silence.

. The artificiality of the gloss placed upon the concept of intended use by Evans was pointed out in Dyson v. General Motors Corp., 298 F. Supp. 1064 (1969)
“ ... it is the obligation of an automobile manufacturer to provide more than merely a movable platform capable of transporting passengers from one point to another. The passengers must be provided a reasonably safe container within which to make the journey. The roof is a part of such container, and, except in the case of vehicles like convertibles, which essentially have no roof in the normal sense of the term, the roof should provide more than merely protection against rain.”

. See, Note, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 688-694 (1966).

. Grundmanis v. British Motor Corp., 308 F. Supp. 303 (1970), quoting Goddard and Haddon, “Passenger Car Design in Highway Safety.”

. “Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is goldenT not silence.” Samuel Butler