The importance of D'Amario v. Ford and how it protects Florida's consumers.

• Author: Leopold, Theodore J.
• Position: Cover story

Due to an aggressive campaign seeking to legislatively overrule the Florida Supreme Court's decision in D'Amario v. Ford, 806 So. 2d 424 (Fla. 2001), the decision may no longer be good law by the time this article is published. The abolition of this decision, which held that the fault of an automobile manufacturer in a crashworthiness case ordinarily may not be apportioned with the fault of the driver of the vehicle who allegedly caused the initial crash, (1) will be harmful not only to victims who suffer enhanced injuries in automobile accidents, but also to Florida's consumers.

Crashworthiness Doctrine

In the 1960s and 1970s, the products liability tort cause of action was developed to allow consumers injured by products to recover for their injuries according to a defect-based, rather than conduct-based, standard. (2) Under this new cause of action, a consumer could recover for injuries caused by a product defect, regardless of how the defect arose, because the action focused on the dangerous condition of the product, not the conduct that gave rise to the manifestation of the defect. (3) This law broadened the class of consumers injured by products that could recover for their damages from those that could recover only under traditional causes of action for negligence, breach of warranty, and fraud (4) by focusing only on the product and not on anyone's conduct. (5)

Crashworthiness cases are a subset of products liability actions. The crashworthiness doctrine (also commonly known as the enhanced injury doctrine) places a duty upon all manufacturers "to use reasonable care in design to avoid an unreasonable risk of injury or to minimize the extent of the injury in the event of an accident." (6) This doctrine, which gets its name due to its frequent application to automobile manufacturers, (7) has been a part of Florida law for more than 30 years. It was first adopted in Evancho v. Thiel, 297 So. 2d 40 (Fla. 3d DCA 1974), and approved by the Florida Supreme Court in Ford Motor Co. v. Evancho, 327 So. 2d 201 (Fla. 1976). Both courts relied on the reasoning of Larsen v. General Motors, 391 F.2d 495 (8th Cir. 1968), which "recognize[d] a duty of reasonable care on automobile manufacturers based on common law negligence." (8)

In Larsen, the plaintiff claimed that due to a design defect in the steering assembly in a Chevrolet Corvair, "he received injuries he would not have otherwise received or, in the alternative, his injuries would not have been as severe." (9) Beginning with the "principle that a manufacturer's duty of design and construction extends to producing a product that is reasonably fit for its intended use and free of hidden defects that could render it unsafe for such use," (10) the Larsen court focused on the meaning of "intended use" when determining the scope of the manufacturer's liability. The court reasoned:

Automobiles are made for use on the roads and highways in transporting persons and cargo to and from various points. This intended use cannot be carried out without encountering in varying degrees the statistically proved hazard of injury-producing impacts of various types. The manufacturer should not be heard to say that it does not intend its product to be involved in any accident when it can easily foresee and when it knows that the probability over the life of its product is high, that it will be involved in some type of injury-producing accident. (11)

The court held that "[a]ny design defect not causing the accident would not subject the manufacturer to liability for the entire damage, but 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." (12)

In Evancho, the Florida Supreme Court "adopte[d] the Larsen view [by] holding that [a] manufacturer must use reasonable care in design and manufacture of its product to eliminate the unreasonable risk of foreseeable injury" (13) and held "that a manufacturer of automobiles may be liable under certain conditions for a design or manufacturing defect which causes injury but is not the cause of the primary collision." (14) The court, however, specifically noted that it was not attempting to answer the question of whether an automobile manufacturer in a crashworthiness case is a joint tortfeasor with the person that causes the primary collision, or whether a defense of comparative negligence would be appropriate in such cases. (15)

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D'Amario v. Ford

The Florida Supreme Court did not answer the questions that it left open in Evancho until 25 years later in D'Amario v. Ford, 806 So. 2d 424 (Fla. 2001), when it held "that principles of comparative fault concerning apportionment of fault as to the cause of [an] underlying crash will not ordinarily apply in crashworthiness or enhanced injury cases." (16) "Because the manufacturer alleged to be responsible for a defective product that results in a second accident and injury ordinarily may not be held liable for the injuries caused by the initial accident, the fault of the manufacturer may not be compared or apportioned with the fault of the driver of the vehicle who allegedly caused the initial crash." (17)

In D'Amario, the court considered two crashworthiness cases in which the plaintiffs were involved in accidents caused by drunk drivers, but sued the automobile manufacturers for the enhanced injuries they received as a result of defects in their automobiles. (18) In the case styled D'Amario v. Ford, a teenager was severely "injured when the car in which he was riding as a passenger collided with a tree and then burst into flames. The car was driven by a friend of [the plaintiff's] who was allegedly intoxicated and speeding at the time of the accident." (19) The plaintiff sued Ford Motor Company for the injuries he received as a result of a fire that started in the engine area after the accident and created an explosion that engulfed the car in flames, but did not seek recovery for any of the injuries he received as a result of the initial collision when the car hit the tree. (20) The trial court allowed Ford to introduce evidence of the driver's intoxication and excessive speed in order to support its defense that fault should be apportioned to the driver under Fabre v. Marin, 623 So. 2d 1182 (Fla. 1993), for causing the initial accident. (21) "[T]he jury returned a verdict for the defense, finding that Ford was not a legal cause of the injuries to" the plaintiff. (22)

In the other case considered by the Florida Supreme Court, styled Nash v. General Motors Corp., 734 So. 2d 437 (Fla. 3d DCA 1999), the victim "was driving to church with her two children in the back seat of her 1990 Chevrolet Corsica, [when] a car approaching from the opposite direction [and operated by a drunk driver] crossed the center line and crashed into" her car. (23) The victim's "head struck the metal post that separates the windshield from the driver's door [and she] later died as a result of her head injuries." (24) The victim's estate sued General Motors, the manufacturer of her vehicle, alleging a failure of the vehicle's seatbelt. (25) The trial...