Court Opinion

ID: 9717521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:05:06.198268+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:53.694246
License: Public Domain

R. M. Maher, P.J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent. The trial court instructed the jury as follows:
"When I use the word, negligence, with respect to the defendant’s conduct, you will find that I will be referring to negligent design. And in that respect I mean, one, that the design claimed to be negligent was not in conformity with industry design standards or design guidelines established by an authoritative voluntary association; or two, the design choice of the manufacturer carries with it a latent or hidden risk of injury, and the manufacturer has not adequately communicated the nature of that risk to potential users of the product. It is for you to decide whether the design of the machine in this case was negligent under such circumstances. But, that is the definition of the term, negligent design, that I will be using subsequently.”
This language was expressly rejected by the Supreme Court in Owens v Allis-Chalmers Corp, 414 Mich 413, 425; 326 NW2d 372 (1982), where the Supreme Court held that the test for determining whether a product is unreasonably dangerous is not whether the risks are obvious but whether the risks were unreasonable in light of the foreseeable injuries.
I do not agree with the majority that the damage done by this erroneous instruction was corrected by the trial court’s statement of plaintiff’s theory of the case or by the parties’ proofs and oral argument. Even if plaintiff’s theory included the possibility that negligence in design could be *363predicated upon the correct standard (and I note that the language of foreseeability occurs only in the statement of plaintiffs alternate theory, breach of implied warranty), the jury had already been instructed that negligence in design could only be found under the incorrect standard. I do not believe that we can assume that the jury disregarded the trial court’s instruction and relied on the proofs, arguments, and theory of the case instead.
Finally, I do not agree that the Supreme Court’s decision in Owens was intended to apply prospectively only. The opinion in Owens notes that some language in an earlier case might have supported the proposition that liability does not attach when the dangers are patent and obvious, but also notes that that case relied upon another which was subsequently overruled and that the Court of Appeals had essentially limited that language to a very specific factual situation. The Supreme Court approved of that limitation. In addition, as the majority states in its opinion, the Court of Appeals decision in Owens put forward a new analysis for product liability litigation; prior decisions of the Court of Appeals had followed the generally accepted theory eventually adopted by the Supreme Court in its decision in Owens.
For these reasons, I believe that this case should be reversed and remanded to the trial court for a new trial under the correct standard of law.