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D'Amario v. Ford Motor Co.11/21/2001
to unduly confuse the jury by focusing attention on the conduct giving rise to the accident instead of the issues of the existence of a defect and its role in causing the enhanced injuries. Such confusion is magnified in cases such as D'Amario and Nash, which involve intoxicated drivers, due in large measure to the public's understandable intolerance of drunk driving. Indeed, both cases exemplify the confusion caused by focusing on the conduct of a drunk driver and the attendant difficulty juries have in separating the accident-causing fault from the enhanced- injury-causing fault in such cases. While there may be a legitimate issue as to whether the claimant's injuries were caused by the defect, if any, or by the original collision, there is no reason to also litigate the cause of that initial collision.
For example, in both D'Amario and Nash, evidence of the driver's intoxication was admitted in evidence, and both Ford and General Motors were permitted to point the finger at the intoxicated drivers as the cause of the accidents and all of the plaintiffs' resulting injuries. In D'Amario, the jury was told by the court that the parties had stipulated that the driver's excessive speed and intoxication caused the accident. During closing argument, Ford's counsel argued to the jury that the cause of Clifford Harris's injuries was the driver's intoxication and the fact that he "slammed into a pine tree doing 40 miles an hour."
In Nash, evidence of the driver's intoxication was presented that was even more pervasive. During voir dire, defense counsel asked the venire panel about their views on drunk driving . Then, during opening statements, the defense argued that the evidence would show that "at the end of the day . . . the real fault in the case is not anything GM did or did not do with this retractor. It is instead the fault of Charles Chatfield, who that Sunday afternoon, got drunk and then got deadly when he barrelled his 4500-pound Cadillac into the Nash Corsica." The defense introduced evidence of Chatfield's intoxication during trial while cross-examining the investigating officer at the scene of the accident. Officer Medina testified that Chatfield's breath smelled of alcohol and his blood-alcohol level was .15. Finally, during closing argument, the defense argued:
We have got a drunk who gets in a car and goes out on a public thoroughfare and wipes out the life of Carmen Nash and changes the lives of all of those in her family. That's what we have got here: a drunk who aimed his car at Carmen Nash and killed her. And it is that which is the sole cause of the injuries in this case. That is where the blame lies, that is where the fault lies.
The defense made numerous other references to Chatfield's intoxication throughout closing argument-"Charles Chatfield was a drunk," "a disaster in the form of a cream-colored Cadillac driven by a drunk who came blasting out of the blue that Sunday afternoon and snuffed out the life of Carmen Nash." Thus, it is apparent that the defendants in both cases were permitted to effectively shift the focus of the trial from the existence of a defect to the driver's conduct in driving while intoxicated, even though the existence of a defect was the fundamental liability issue to be tried in these cases.
CONCLUSION
In sum, we hold that principles of comparative fault involving the causes of the first collision do not generally apply in crashworthiness cases. Such a rule, we believe, recognizes the important distinction between fault in causing the accident and fault in causing additional or enhanced injuries as a result of a product defect, a distinction that defines and limits a manufacturer's liability in
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