Court Opinion

ID: 9609283
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:25:00.888881+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:50.097636
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
Close perception of the logical kind suggests that this court, and perhaps segments of the American adjudicatory system, postulates different evidentiary standards, dependent upon utilization for criminal prosecution as denied to defense and now also denied to plaintiffs in civil cases.1 I dissent from Section II of the decision encompassing a denial to plaintiff of information available to document defendant’s product failure. Weight and contendable validity should be retained as a jury-fact-finder function. Otherwise we permit the judge to pretry matters of evidentiary conflict.
Prejudice aside, which introductory disability we have regularly denied criminal defendants, evidence of similar problems and mechanical failures, accommodates in logic relevance a definable degree of probability. Discretion in the context of Martin v. State, Wyo., 720 P.2d 894 (1986), and evidentiary exclusion of relevant and informative facts, are not synonymous within my concept of the proper operation of the justice-delivery system. Asbestosis, all-terrain three-wheelers, and intra-uterine devices should have taught us that great damage is caused and many deaths occur when product danger or misfunction are ignored by the contamination spreaders.
If you are socially, or as in some states criminally, obligated to buckle up, countervailing capacity to unbuckle should not be denied by product failure when emergency descends. Whether frantic misfunction of the user or factual nonoperation of a defective product, the question should be accorded factual contemplation by the community-represented jury for the justice decision. *367Based on relevantly informative evidence as would be afforded by similar problems, I would find a proper factual form for the plaintiff to explore.
I also differ and dissent from the deci-sional approval of the directed verdict in Section IV. If a defective product and constituent negligence existed, reason is totally missing to ascribe decision justification in proximate-cause criteria. Otherwise you assume to deny the premise in order to derive a negative conclusion. Validity of the premise should be left to the fact finder, and consequent proximate cause surely then cannot be denied by directed-verdict legal conclusion. Vassos v. Roussalis, Wyo., 658 P.2d 1284 (1983); Holstedt v. Neighbors, Wyo., 377 P.2d 181 (1962); In re Draper’s Estate, Wyo., 374 P.2d 425 (1962). Without question, and after all, it was the delayed extrication from the seat belt that caused all damage for which claim in this case is made.
A current comprehensive and well-considered analysis of proximate cause in products-liability cases is found in Fischer, Products Liability — Proximate Cause, Intervening Cause, and Duty, 52 Mo.L.Rev. 547 (1987).

. '“ * * * as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident.' (Emphasis added.)” Brown v. State, Wyo., 736 P.2d 1110, 1111 (1987), quoting Rule 404, W.R.E.