Court Opinion

ID: 9746389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:14:14.998723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:12.681045
License: Public Domain

HUTCHINSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
I am compelled, in the words of a popular song, to “speak out against the madness.” The instant madness is a creeping consensus among us judges and lawyers that we are more capable of designing products than engineers. A courtroom is a poor substitute for a design office. Design develops a product to perform a particular function within perceived physical, technical and economic constraints. As a creative process it is teamwork oriented, not adversary oriented. Academic experience, access to the proper tools and, most importantly, experience in the field are the attributes of a good engineer or engineering organization. Courts are at best novices in the designer’s field and often illiterate in his language. The technical or design expertise we gain in one case is generally not transferable to the next. Nevertheless, we must provide an impartial forum when poorly designed products cause injuries.
*347To provide that kind of forum, we need all the help we can get. Accordingly, I do not believe that industry standards, like the American Society of Mechanical Engineers standards at issue here, are irrelevant to the issue of whether a product was defectively designed. The majority assumes that industry standards are relevant only to establish the duty of care, an element of a cause of action in negligence which is not required for strict liability. This view is too narrow.
Industry standards are written by individuals considered by their peers in industry, academia and research to be especially knowledgeable in a particular technical specialty. These standards contain their collective expert wisdom. The committees who prepare the standards are as respected in their fields as the American Law Institute, on whose formulation of the law of strict liability the majority relies, is in ours. Their collective opinion is at least as valuable as any individual expert witness’s. Of course, these industry standards would not be conclusive, but their relevance and competence is clear.
The majority says that admission of industry standards is improper because the standards will necessarily introduce negligence concepts into products liability. However, it permits the opinions of individual experts hired by the parties to be admitted at trial. This is inconsistent. On the question of whether a product is poorly designed we should at least hear the opinions of those experts who operate in the shop or design office, where the atmosphere is somewhat more objective than the courtroom.
In addition, there is respectable legal opinion that liability for defective design cannot avoid the question of relative care, at least on the question of legal cause. See Foley v. Clark Equipment Co., 361 Pa.Superior Ct. 599, 523 A.2d 379 (1987) (opinion by Wieand, J.).
FLAHERTY, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.