Court Opinion

ID: 9674892
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:36:57.68807+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:30.094995
License: Public Domain

SIMONETT, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
1.First of all, I concur in the majority opinion that the jury’s finding of strict liability on the part of the defendants should be affirmed. There is sufficient evidence from which the jury could have found that the truck, when sold, was in a defective condition and this defective condition was a cause of the accident. The fact is, however, that plaintiffs never proved why the hoist collapsed. The only evidence of a flaw in the truck unit was the defective cam in the linkage assembly, but it was never shown how this might be the cause of Hudson’s injuries. Donald Hudson was struck because the hoist failed, not because the tailgate failed to open. Plaintiffs’ expert was never asked if he had an opinion as to why the dump box dropped. Nor was the expert ever asked if he had an opinion as to how the defect in the linkage was a cause of the hoist’s collapse.
It was, however, sufficiently shown that the dump box on this brandnew truck unit would not have dropped but for a defect in the unit. This case is a good illustration of the difference between a strict liability cause of action and negligence. Here plaintiffs, as a matter of law, never made out any negligence; and since the truck was not in the control of Hudson at all critical times, res ipsa loquitur did not apply. Strict liability,- however, involves a relaxation of the rules of negligence law and permits here a finding of liability by the jury. Compare, for example, Jagmin v. Simonds Abrasive Co., 61 Wis.2d 60, 211 N.W.2d 810 (1973).
2. Secondly, the jury found that the seller, Potomac Ford Truck Sales, Inc., sold a defective unit and that the defect was a cause of Mr. Hudson’s injury, yet, in apportioning fault, the jury put Potomac’s fault at zero. I do not think these answers are inconsistent. As the majority opinion points out, this only means the jury found that Potomac sold a defective truck but that Potomac “was not responsible for the defect.” I do not understand the majority to mean by this that Potomac is not liable to plaintiffs in strict liability, only that Potomac’s liability “stems solely from its passive role as the retailer of a defective product furnished to it by the manufacturer.” Farr v. Armstrong Rubber Co., 288 Minn. 83, 97, 179 N.W.2d 64, 73 (1970). In other words, Potomac is liable to plaintiffs but only in a vicarious or derivative sense as the inert seller in the marketing chain. This is not the kind of conduct that needs to be included in .a comparative fault question, and the jury properly ignored it. Potomac should be found liable to plaintiffs but entitled to indemnity from the other defendants, as was done in Farr, supra, and Jack Frost, Inc. v. Engineered Building Components Co., Inc., 304 N.W.2d 346 (Minn.1981). Tolbert v. Gerber Industries, Inc., 255 N.W.2d 362 (Minn.1977), does not preclude indemnity in this situation.
3. Finally, since the jury found both the plaintiff-employee Hudson and the third-party defendant employer, Jack L. Olsen, Inc., 20% at fault, the trial court held that Perfection and Snyder, the two manufacturers, were not entitled to contribution from Olsen. The majority opinion holds this ruling was error. I disagree.
*159Lambertson v. Cincinnati Corp., 312 Minn. 114, 257 N.W.2d 679 (1977), holds that a third-party tortfeasor is entitled to contribution from the employer in an amount proportional to the employee’s percentage of fault but not to exceed its workers’ compensation liability. In Lambertson, the employee was only 15% negligent while the employer was' 60% negligent; in other words, the employer would have been liable to plaintiff under comparative negligence law but for workers’ compensation immunity. The employer was similarly situated in Johnson v. Raske Building Systems, Inc., 276 N.W.2d 79 (Minn.1979). Neither Lambertson nor Johnson reached the question whether comparative fault liability principles were to be ignored.
How to adjust liabilities and apportion loss when the principles of a common-law, comparative fault action conflict with the counter policies of the workers’ compensation law is perplexing. In Lambertson, to achieve a more equitable result, we relaxed the technical requirements for contribution, but it does not seem to me we should now rely on technicalities to relax comparative fault principles.
The fact Hudson was not seeking to recover from Olsen does not seem to me of much weight. If Olsen had not been an employer immune from suit by plaintiff, then surely Olsen’s liability for contribution to the defendant third-party plaintiffs who sued him would depend on Olsen’s fault being less than plaintiff’s. Liability should not depend on the status of the pleadings. In judging the conduct of the parties, the jury is not concerned with who is a direct defendant and who is a third-party defendant. Perhaps Olsen’s right to reimbursement for compensation benefits should be curtailed because of its 20% fault. Since reimbursement is subject to equitable principles, this could be done; but I do not think we should create a pure comparative fault exception to our comparative fault law.