Court Opinion

ID: 9793159
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:43:47.656045+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:02:43.897872
License: Public Domain

THORNTON, J.,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority that the complaint states sufficient facts to constitute a cause of action on the *718strict liability theory, and that the trier of fact can find from allegations in the complaint that the action was timely brought. I therefore join with the majority in holding that the sustaining of the demurrer was error.
However, I am unable to agree with the majority’s conclusion that privity of contract between the parties is required for the plaintiff to have a cause of action on a breach of warranty theory for the personal injuries she allegedly sustained.
As the majority notes, the Supreme Court stated in Redfield v. Mead, Johnson & Co., 266 Or 273, 284, n 4, 512 P2d 776 (1973), that it was not necessary in that case to decide "whether the protection of the Code’s warranty provisions will be extended to other persons [than the immediate purchaser] in the distributive chain,” who seek recovery for personal injuries. Thus, the Supreme Court implicitly recognized that its earlier holdings requiring privity in breach of warranty actions involving economic loss, do not answer the question which the court did not have to reach in Redfield and which is before us today. I therefore do not agree with the majority’s suggestion that the Supreme Court’s decisions in the economic loss cases are controlling. I also disagree with the majority’s suggestion that there is any relevant distinction between situations where the plaintiff is a remote purchaser, as in Redfield, and situations like the present one where a person is injured by contact with a product in the possession of the immediate purchaser. Privity is no more present in one situation than the other.
The majority argues that the legislature, in adopting ORS 72.3180, made a policy decision as to the "class of personally injured third parties to whom the seller’s implied warranty of merchantability was deemed to extend” (43 Or App at 17), that plaintiff is not within that class, and that this court should not "expand upon the legislature’s policy decision” (43 Or *719App at 17). The majority apparently overlooks the official comment to UCC Section 2-313 (ORS 72.3130), which provides in part:
" * * * [T]he warranty sections of this Article [ORS ch 72] are not designed in any way to disturb those lines of case law growth which have recognized that warranties need not be confined either to sales contracts or to the direct parties to such a contract. * * * The provisions of Section 2-318 [ORS 72.3180] on third party beneficiaries expressly recognize this case law development within one particular area. Beyond that, the matter is left to the case law with the intention that the policies of this Act may offer useful guidance in dealing with further cases as they arise. ” (Emphasis supplied.)
The Comment plainly contemplates that questions such as the one before us are not deemed to have been legislatively answered and are appropriate subjects for judicial decision. In my view, the factors which are relevant to our decision are substantially identical to those which led the courts to reject privity as a prerequisite in actions based on strict liability. The rationale for dispensing with privity in the strict liability context is that dangerous defects in goods place "remote buyers, users, or others foreseeably within the range of danger,” Russell v. Ford Motor Company, 281 Or 587, 590, 575 P2d 1383 (1978), and the risk should therefore be borne by the manufacturer or seller who introduces the danger into the marketplace.
The same rationale can and should logically extend to manufacturers’ and sellers’ warranties. If a product will foreseeably come into contact with persons other than the direct purchaser and if, because it is not as warranted, it causes physical injury to such persons, there is no less reason for permitting the injured person to seek recovery on a warranty theory against the manufacturer or seller who gave the warranty than to proceed under Section 402 A. For example, the manufacturer of the insecticide in this case could well have foreseen that persons other than the purchaser would be exposed to the product which was allegedly *720warranted to be safe for use in the purchaser’s plant, and that those persons could be injured if the product were not safe when so used. Conversely, economic or business loss to third parties would not be as reasonably foreseeable by a seller who warrants a product to the direct purchaser. In sum, I regard the rationale for dispensing with privity when a physically injured plaintiff’s theory is strict liability to be equally persuasive when a plaintiff seeks to recover for such an injury on a breach of warranty theory. I therefore reject the majority’s implicit rationale that privity should be required in breach of warranty cases involving physical injury for the same reasons privity is required in economic loss cases.
The majority expresses concern that, if third parties were permitted to proceed on a breach of warranty theory for personal injuries, the courts would be required to "start all over again determining which kinds of products will be included in this new area of liability.” (43 Or App at 717, emphasis in original.) If I shared that expectation, my answer would be that that, among other things, is what courts are for. However, I do not agree that the parade of horribles the majority foresees would follow from the adoption of the position expressed in this opinion.
The test proposed here is that liability for breach of warranty should attach if the maker of a warranty should reasonably foresee that the warranted product will come into contact with third parties and that, if it is not as warranted, it can cause injury to such persons. Under that test, the 'kinds of products' questions which are likely to arise will be largely answered by cases which have addressed analogous questions in the strict liability context. Moreover, the questions the majority anticipates would seemingly be the same whether immediate purchasers or third parties proceeded on a breach of warranty theory to recover for personal injuries. The court system has handily survived breach of warranty actions by physically injured immediate purchasers.
*721For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that plaintiff has no cause of action for breach of warranty.
Lee, J., joins in this concurring and dissenting opinion.