Court Opinion

ID: 9661993
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:56:39.289231+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:35.671967
License: Public Domain

PALMORE, Chief Justice,
concurring.
My concurrence in the result reached by the majority opinion rests upon two basic principles mentioned in Ulrich v. Kasco Abrasives Co., Ky., 532 S.W.2d 197, 200, 201 (1976). One is that whether a product is “unreasonably dangerous” when put on the market is to be assessed in terms of those persons “who should be expected to use or be exposed to it.” I simply do not think that an innocent bystander in a garage or service station where an automobile owned by the possessor of a gun is being washed comes within the category of persons whom the manufacturer or seller of the gun should expect to be exposed to it. Had the gun been dropped accidentally by Price himself, perhaps a case could be made for the proposition that the manufacturer should have anticipated that other persons in his presence would be exposed, but in this instance Price was not handling the gun and his presence or absence was immaterial. It was purely a freak accident.
The other principle is that even if the gun was unreasonably dangerous it would hardly be fair to hold the manufacturer responsible for such an unforeseeable act of negligence on the part of a possessor who had been fully warned of the danger. In recent years the doctrine that one is not required to anticipate the negligence of another may have lost some of its quondam vitality, but it is not dead yet. It is my firm opinion that this accident resulted from an act of negligence on the part of Price that the manufacturer was not bound to foresee, and which therefore was a superseding cause.