Court Opinion

ID: 9558718
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:15:58.44223+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:33.338329
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I.
ATTORNEY FEES
In that part of the Court’s opinion which reverses the award of attorney fees, I concur.
II.
OF HUMAN LIFE, ECONOMIC LOSS, and a HOBSON’S CHOICE
The following analysis is furnished in the appellants’ brief, and aptly states the basis for my dissent:
[T]he current dichotomy in Idaho law on recovery of economic damages in tort actions [is that] an Idaho plaintiff may not recover economic loss in negligence cases. According to the court, a remote purchaser (M.C. Leasing) in the chain of distribution has no contractual remedies against the manufacturer or anyone else in the distributive chain, other than the direct seller, and a remote user (Transtector) of the product has no contract claims because it is not in privity with the actual seller. Therefore, under Idaho law, persons damaged are left with a Hobson’s choice: [such plaintiffs] can either attempt to convince a trial court to overturn the privity requirement and allow breach of warranty claims to proceed, or attempt to convince that same court to allow claims seeking economic loss in tort actions to proceed, or do both. The plaintiffs herein chose to follow both options, were allowed by the trial court to pursue neither, and were also assessed the attorney fees incurred by the parties which committed the acts giving rise to the lawsuit in the first place.
Proper analysis of this issue requires an examination of what is meant by the term “economic loss.” The Idaho cases have denied recovery of economic loss in tort, due to a reluctance to use unintentional torts to protect the economic expectations of the parties. See, e.g., Tusch Enterprises v. Coffin, supra, 113 Idaho [37] at 40 [740 P.2d 1022 (1987)]. Tusch is the latest pronouncement on this issue, but all of the cases have dealt with product failures which simply failed to meet buyers’ expectations and this denial was a product of the court’s reluctance to reward buyers with lost income, profits or loss of use of a product. See, Tusch Enterprises, supra, (lost rental income and damage to structure); State v. Mitchell, Constr. Co., supra (defective roof); Clark v. International Harvester Co., 99 Idaho 326, 581 P.2d 784 (1978) (lost profits and cost of repair).
This case is dramatically different. The evidence at trial established that controls on the aircraft which was the basis of this litigation, froze and caused a precipitous drop in altitude. The evidence showed that this occurred on two separate occasions. Understandably, the plaintiffs, therefore, refused to operate the aircraft and proceeded with the suit. The fact that the jury did not rule in plaintiffs’ favor is irrelevant to this analysis.
While the relief sought in this case was economic in nature, the reason for the suit was plaintiffs’ refusal to use the airplane, which only occurred because of the potential for calamitous personal injury or property damage. That factor was not present in any of the line of Idaho cases which has lead to the denial of economic injury in unintentional tort cases. The fact that the plaintiffs stopped using the airplane and therefore avoided a potential personal injury or death accident calls into question the wisdom of a system which would deny recovery to the purchaser who avoids personal injury or death and provides recovery to the purchaser who suffers the calamitous event, notwithstanding that such avoidance in mitigation of far more serious personal injury and damages results in some measure of ‘economic loss.’ This court should determine *632whether the policy of this State should reward product users who continue to use a malfunctioning product until it causes injury or death, and deny recovery to a product user who quits using the product prior to injury or death.
Appellants’ Brief, 31-33.