Court Opinion

ID: 9680907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:40:51.143636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:31.223357
License: Public Domain

Concurring opinion on motion for rehearing by
POPE, J.
POPE, Justice, concurring.
There is a basic fallacy in the majority opinion. The first holding is that damages to the product itself creates only a contract action for economic loss on implied warranty. The majority next holds that this is an action for tort in the fashion of strict liability because the damages to the product spilled over onto “other” property. The majority then denies the plaintiff any recovery on that basis, so the plaintiff has lost its case on the theory that the majority says was a correct one.
What is left then for trial? If this is, as the majority says, a tort case, then why is it being remanded for trial as a contract case? If it is a strict liability case, why is it remanded for retrial as a case for breach of an implied warranty? What the majority is really saying is that it is unimportant whether the plaintiff’s action is one in tort or contract. Whatever the case might be, the plaintiff can try it once, lose it, and then start over in a new trial. The ruling is *334basically unfair and affords a plaintiff two separate trials on the same set of facts.