The minority gets it right: the Florida Supreme Court reinvigorates the crashworthiness doctrine in D'Amario v. Ford.

• Author: Ricci, Edward M.
• Position: Cover Story

Since its recognition more than 30 years ago, the crashworthiness doctrine has become a central tenet of products liability law. The doctrine applies principally in so-called "second collision" or "enhanced injury" cases involving automobile crashes with two distinct "collisions." (1) The first collision causes the accident itself (vehicle A hits vehicle B). The second collision causes the plaintiff's so-called enhanced injuries (during the impact with vehicle B, the driver of vehicle A strikes the interior of his vehicle and is injured or killed). The crashworthiness doctrine simply holds that the manufacturer of the vehicle is liable--in negligence and/or strict liability--for the enhanced injuries sustained from the second collision.

Even though the doctrine itself is relatively straightforward, some aspects of its application are not. Foremost among them is whether a manufacturer can reduce its liability for a victim's enhanced injuries by apportioning fault among those parties who caused the initial collision.

Two lines of cases have emerged in this hotly contested debate. The majority view holds that a manufacturer's fault in causing enhanced injuries may be reduced by the fault of those (i.e., the plaintiff or third parties) who caused the initial collision. The minority position, by contrast, maintains that because a manufacturer is solely responsible for its product's defects, it should also be solely liable for the enhanced injuries caused by those defects.

This debate is more than academic. Crashworthiness cases frequently involve catastrophic injuries, e.g., death, paralysis, and brain damage, that are quite often the result of a second collision caused by a product defect. Permitting manufacturers to reduce their liability for these injuries by contending that they were actually caused by the parties responsible for the initial collision dramatically impacts the equities, economics, and outcomes of automotive products liability cases.

The majority view has long had numbers on its side. (2) And after the Restatement (Third) of Torts lent its formal support in 1998, it seemed to have momentum as well. (3) Then, in a turn against the tide, the Florida Supreme Court in November 2001 issued D'Amario v. Ford, 806 So. 2d 424 (Fla. 2001), a well-reasoned opinion that firmly aligned Florida with the minority view and overturned a 1995 Florida appellate court decision that had previously put Florida in the majority camp.

Through its profile, thoroughness, and purposeful rejection of the majority view, D'Amario takes a provocative stand in crashworthiness jurisprudence. Yet the question remains: Is the decision true to--or a departure from--the principles that led to the development of the crashworthiness doctrine 35 years ago?

This article attempts to answer this question by 1) considering the majority and minority positions regarding the application of comparative fault principles in crashworthiness cases; 2) exploring the D'Amario decision in detail; and 3) discussing its implication for dealing with claims of comparative fault in crashworthiness cases.

Birth of the Doctrine

The crashworthiness doctrine formally began in 1968 with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Larsen v. General Motors Corp., 391 F.2d 495 (8th Cir. 1968). The case centered on severe injuries suffered by the plaintiff when the steering mechanism of his 1963 Chevrolet Corvair thrust backwards and struck him in the head during a head-on collision. The plaintiff claimed that the steering assembly was defective and caused him to suffer enhanced injuries that he would not have suffered had it been properly designed. The defendant-manufacturer, General Motors, argued that it had "no duty whatsoever to design and manufacture a vehicle which is otherwise 'safe' or 'safer' to occupy during collision impacts." (4) The court pointedly disagreed. It first observed that "[w]hile automobiles are not made for the purpose of colliding with each other, a frequent and inevitable contingency of normal automobile use will result in collisions and injury-producing impacts." (5) After concluding that such collisions and injuries were foreseeable, the court held that manufacturers have a reasonable, but not absolute, duty to minimize them: "[A] manufacturer is under a duty to use reasonable care in the design of its vehicle to minimize the unreasonable risk of injuries in the event of collisions." (6)

The court also rejected General Motors' contention that imposition of this duty singled out automakers for expanded liability. To the contrary, the court considered its ruling well rooted in general negligence principles that required all manufacturers to provide products that were fit for their intended use and free from hidden defects. (7) In this regard, the court emphasized that the manufacturer's duty to produce crashworthy vehicles extended only to the prevention of enhanced injuries. "The manufacturer should be liable for that portion of the damage or injury caused by the defective design over and above the damage or injury that probably would have occurred as a result of the impact or collision absent the defective design."

Larsen's importance cannot be overstated. It articulated the three core elements of the crashworthiness doctrine: 1) vehicle collisions are inevitable and reasonably foreseeable; 2) auto manufacturers have a duty to use reasonable care to reduce the unreasonable risk of injury in collisions; and 3) liability for a manufacturers' failure to do so is limited to those injuries caused by product defect, i.e., injuries in excess of those that would have resulted from the first collision absent the defect.

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