Court Opinion

ID: 9455834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:34:56.557394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:45.301948
License: Public Domain

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I think this case was tried below on the wrong theory. The government’s own literature described inflated aviation tires as being “dangerous as an armed bomb”. The record establishes that airplane tires the size of these were so dangerous and so difficult to deflate and dismantle in reasonable safety that armed forces personnel were actually required to attend school to learn how to handle them. The Navy Manual in evidence, which unfortunately was never brought to the attention of plaintiff’s decedent and the other seriously injured plaintiff, not only warned armed forces personnel of the danger, but instructed on the precise matter that caused death and injury here.
WARNING
Before any attempt is made to break the tire beads loose from the wheel flanges, verify that the tire has been completely deflated and that the valve core has been removed. If the valve stem is equipped with a valve extension, remove the extension and make sure that the second valve core has also been removed. Never attempt to remove wheel bolts or break beads loose until this check has been made. A tire not completely deflated is as dangerous as an armed bomb. (Emphasis added)
It seems to me unjust that the United States may with impunity offer for sale and sell to the general public without any warning whatsoever and without instructions to diminish the *302risk — precautions obviously thought necessary for the protection of their own trained armed forces personnel— inflated aircraft tires described by its own instruction manual as “dangerous as an armed bomb”. If there ever can be justification for strict liability, it seems to me that this is such a case.
Strict liability does not rest upon a comparison of faults. The premise of such liability is a value judgment that transfers, in extra hazardous situations,
some of the duty to protect potential victims from the victims themselves to the entrepreneur. In such a context ordinary questions of negligence on either side of the scale become irrelevant. Human failings like inadvertance are simply part of the setting that makes a toll of the enterprise inevitable.
2 Harper & James, .The Law of Torts, Section 22.7 at 1217 (1956).
■ “It frequently is said that the contributory negligence of the plaintiff is not a defense in cases of strict liability.” Prosser, Law of Torts, Section 78 at 538 (1964). The reason for the rule rests in part on the “policy which places the absolute responsibility for preventing the harm upon the defendant, whether his conduct is regarded as fundamentally antisocial, or he is considered merely to be in a better position to transfer the loss to the community.” Prosser, swpra. I can’t think of an “entrepreneur” better able to do so than the United States.
“[I]n cases where the defendant is carrying on an abnormally dangerous activity, such as blasting [or the sale of “armed bombs”], contributory negligence which merely fails to discover the peril and avoid it will not prevent the plaintiff’s action.” Prosser, supra, at 539. That it has done so here compels my dissent. I would reverse and remand for a new trial on the theory of strict liability.