Court Opinion

ID: 9486141
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:38:54.676642+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:32.679386
License: Public Domain

MANION, Circuit Judge,
with whom POSNER, Chief Judge, and BAUER, COFFEY, and KANNE, Circuit Judges, join dissenting in part.
I respectfully dissent. Although I agree with the court’s resolution of the warning issue, I disagree that there is any need to certify the questions about the consumer contemplation test or the risk-utility test.
Even though we are incapable of creating binding state law, we can apply existing state law. Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78, 58 S.Ct. 817, 822, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938). Certification is appropriate when the existing state law is hopelessly “unclear or conflicting.” Transamerica Ins. Co. v. Henry, 904 F.2d 387, 390 (7th Cir.1990). If state law is merely undeveloped on a particular issue, we should make our best predictive judgment. Heller Intern. Corp. v. Sharp, 974 F.2d 850, 858 (7th Cir.1992). See Charles A. Wright, Arthur R. Miller and Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4507, at 89 (1982) (“federal court must determine issues of state law as it believes the highest court of the state would determine them”).
Illinois strict products liability law is not hopelessly unclear or conflicting. Rather, Illinois has adopted the standardized approach of Section 402A, Restatement (Second) of Torts, to assess a manufacturer’s liability for injuries caused by its products. Section 402A imposes liability only on manufacturers who sell a “product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer.” When a manufacturer sells an unreasonably dangerous product, its liability extends to the foreseeable user. Doser v. Savage Manufacturing & Sales, Inc., 142 Ill.2d 176, 154 Ill.Dec. 593, 603, 568 N.E.2d 814, 824 (1990); See also Winnett v. Winnett, 57 Ill.2d 7, 10, 310 N.E.2d 1, 4 (1974) (“the liability of a manufacturer properly encompasses only those individuals to whom injury from a defective product may be reasonably foreseen and only those situations where the product is being used for the purpose for which it was intended or for which it is reasonably foreseeable that it may be used.”)
Bic concedes for the purposes of this appeal that a child is a foreseeable user of a lighter. Bic contends, however, that a lighter with the warning “KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN” is not unreasonably dangerous. We need not deflect Bic’s contention to the Illinois Supreme Court for resolution. That court has already adopted the consumer contemplation test as a means to determine whether a product is unreasonably dangerous. See Lamkin v. Towner, 138 Ill.2d 510, 150 Ill.Dec. 562, 570, 563 N.E.2d 449, 457 (1990).
Comment (i) to Section 402A sets out the consumer contemplation test. The entire comment bears reading, but for our purposes, only a part of it bears repeating:
Many products cannot possibly be made entirely safe for all consumption, and any food or drug necessarily involves some risk of harm, if only from over-consumption. Ordinary sugar is a deadly poison to diabetics, and castor oil found use under Mussolini as an instrument of torture. That is not what is meant by “unreasonably dangerous” in this Section. The article sold must be dangerous to an extent beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary consumer who purchases it, with the ordinary knowledge common to the community as to its characteristics.
(Emphasis added.) The Illinois Supreme Court frames the test as follows: “A product *1228is ‘unreasonably dangerous’ when it is ‘dangerous to an extent beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary consumer who purchases it, with the ordinary knowledge common to the community as to its characteristics.” Lamkin, 138 Ill.2d 510,150 Ill.Dec. at 570, 563 N.E.2d at 457 (citations omitted).
Cigarette lighters are not unreasonably dangerous under the consumer contemplation test. Ordinary consumers — if not children — know lighters cause fires. Just because a child may be a foreseeable user of a cigarette lighter does not make the child an ordinary consumer “with the ordinary knowledge common to the community as to [the product’s] characteristics.” Reason dictates that a child is not an ordinary consumer. Children lack knowledge common to the community regarding consumer products.1 The Illinois Supreme Court has never mingled the separate concepts of foreseeable user and ordinary consumer. The first concept is used to determine the extent of a manufacturer’s duty, while the second is used to determine whether a product is unreasonably dangerous. Because the Illinois Supreme Court has never mingled these concepts, we should not ask it to sort them out.
In Lamkin, the Illinois Supreme Court countenanced another test — the risk-utility test — to determine if a product is unreasonably dangerous. Lamkin, 138 Ill.2d 510, 150 Ill.Dec. at 570, 563 N.E.2d at 457. Illinois courts have not yet extended this test to apply to a simple but obviously dangerous consumer product. The only intermediate Illinois appellate court which has considered the issue has determined that such an extension should never take place. Scoby v. Vulcan-Hart Corp., 211 Ill.App.3d 106, 155 Ill.Dec. 536, 540, 569 N.E.2d 1147, 1151 (1991). As that court recognized, absurd results attach if courts apply the risk-utility test to a simple but obviously dangerous product. Consider the ordinary kitchen knife. Suppose a plaintiff cut by such a knife sued its manufacturer for failing to design a permanent retractable sheath for the knife. Should the plaintiff be able to avoid summary judgment simply by presenting statistics showing the feasibility of a permanent retractable sheath? The logical answer is no. As the court in Scoby recognized “[m]any manufactured products have a potential to cause substantial injury and most can be made safer by a different design.” Id. That court refused to apply the risk-utility test to gauge a manufacturer’s liability for failing to provide a cover for a kitchen fryer:
We do not deem that Lamkin or other cases applying aspects of the danger-utility test intend that all manufacturers of products described above should be subject to liability depending on the trier of fact’s balancing under that test, when suit is brought by one injured by such a product. Somewhere, a line must be drawn beyond which the danger-utility test cannot be applied. Considering not only the obvious nature of any danger here but, also, the simple nature of the mechanism involved, we conclude that the circuit court properly applied only the consumer-user contemplation test. Under that test, summary judgment for the defendant was clearly proper.
Id. Scoby is our best source to predict whether Illinois would apply the risk-utility test to a simple but obviously dangerous product, such as a lighter. See Wright, Miller and Cooper, § 4507, at 94 (“If a state’s highest court has not ruled on an issue, intermediate appellate court decisions constitute the next best indicia of what state law is.”). We do not overstep our bounds as a federal court by predicting that the Illinois Supreme Court would adopt the position advanced in Scoby.
Our system allows parties to present issues of state law to federal courts. 28 U.S.C. *1229§ 1332; Erie, 304 U.S. 64† 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188. Bic and the Todds are before us, and we are capable of giving them an answer. Under readily apparent Illinois law, a lighter is not unreasonably dangerous. The district court correctly granted summary judgment in Bic’s favor.

. Consider the absurd results if courts were required to look to the expectations of children when gauging a product’s dangerousness. Children cannot perceive the risk of harm which accompanies the misuse of just about any product. For instance, it is not within a child’s contemplation that a bar of soap left on a staircase may cause tragedy. That fact does not make a bar of soap unreasonably dangerous. Unlike a child, the ordinary consumer knows that a misplaced bar of soap can cause someone to slip and fall. Because of this, a bar of soap is not "dangerous to an extent beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary consumer.”