Court Opinion

ID: 9754016
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:38:39.123122+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:59.910225
License: Public Domain

McKUSICK, Chief Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I would affirm the orders of the Superior Court. Thus, I concur with the majority’s treatment of Count I based on negligence and dissent from its treatment of Count II based on strict liability.
I concur with affirming the Superior Court’s denial of defendant’s motion to dismiss Count I of the complaint pleading a cause of action in negligence in the manufacture of a television set sold in 1970 that allegedly caused injury in 1974. I agree that for purposes of the statute of limitations, plaintiff’s negligence cause of action accrued only when she had a judicially recognizable claim against the manufacturer, and that occurred only when she suffered injury. See Williams v. Ford Motor Co., Me., 342 A.2d 712, 718 (1975).
I dissent, however, from the court’s reversal of the order of the Superior Court dismissing the strict liability count. I would affirm the decision of the Superior Court justice that “section 221 of Title 14, M.R.S.A., has no applicability to this case.” I agree with the Superior Court justice that, in creating strict liability for product manufacturers by enacting section 221 in 1973, the legislature never intended to impose that strict liability as to products that had previously been put into the stream of commerce. The 1973 legislation created a new and higher order of liability for product manufacturers, and it is not to be lightly assumed that the manufacturers of products that had already been made and sold under a different state of the law were, by force of the new legislation, intended to have an entirely new and increased exposure to liability. The question here is exclusively one of the legislative intent in enacting P.L. 1973, ch. 466, laying down the new strict liability rule of 14 M.R.S.A. § 221. Although the statement of this court in Burke v. Hamilton Beach Division, Me., 424 A.2d 145, 148-49, 148 n.6 (1981), was concededly a dictum, it was nevertheless a carefully considered view, arrived at after a study of the legislature’s handling of its successive enlargements of the law of products liability. See id. at 146-47. The court’s decision today is not making new law to apply indefinitely into the future. The legislature has already done that by enacting the strict liability statute that took effect on October 3,1973. Rather, the court is, by interpretation of the applicabili*948ty section of the 1973 law, imposing that higher order of liability on a subset of products manufactured and sold prior to October 3, 1973.
The court today decides that the 1973 strict liability statute, 14 M.R.S.A. § 221, applies to any injury occurring after October 3, 1973, even though the statutorily necessary operative fact of the “sell[ing of] any goods or products in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer or to his property” occurred prior to October 3,1973. Although I agree that a strict liability cause of action arises for statute of limitations purposes only when injury is incurred, I do not find that rule of law helpful in divining what the legislature intended on the question of when to start to apply the new strict liability rule of section 221. All that the legislature expressly did by the applicability provision that accompanied the 1973 enactment of section 221, phrased as it was in negative terms, was to exclude from operation of the new strict liability law any causes of action in negligence or warranty that had already arisen before October 3, 1973. P.L. 1973, ch. 466, § 2. The 1973 strict liability statute imposes liability only on “[o]ne who sells any goods or products.” We are left with the question whether the 1973 legislature intended to impose strict liability upon past sellers, whether or not they otherwise had any continuing association with the goods or products. The Law Court long ago laid down the applicable rule of construction as follows:
Barren of [any] express commands or convincing implications, the [new strict liability law] can not be deemed to have been intended to be retroactive. It must be construed by the fundamental rule of statutory construction strictly followed by this Court that all statutes will be considered to have a prospective operation only, unless the legislative intent to the contrary is clearly expressed or necessarily implied from the language used.
Miller v. Fallon, 134 Me. 145, 148, 183 A. 416, 417 (1936). The legislature has issued no “express commands or convincing implications” that sellers of products prior to October 3, 1973, must be saddled with the enlarged legal liability imposed for the first time by section 221. On the contrary, as traced in Burke, supra at 148 n.6, the legislature has displayed a consistent commitment not to apply changes in products liability law to past sales.
In summary, the question on the negligence count was simply one of whether the statute of limitations had run, and the Superior Court and all members of the Law Court agree that it had not. On the other hand, the question on the strict liability count is not when the cause of action arose for statute of limitations purposes, but rather whether the legislature in imposing strict liability on sellers of products intended the new law to apply to past sellers. On that latter question, I agree with the Superior Court justice.