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D'Amario v. Ford Motor Co.11/21/2001
potential liability for all of the plaintiff's injuries, but logically, following the enhanced injury theory of the plaintiff, only the manufacturer should have the liability because the other driver's conduct in causing the initial collision would not have caused the injury absent the design defect. Thus, carrying the theory to its logical conclusion, plaintiff should have no recovery against the other driver for his negligence in causing the collision. This result would run counter to well settled principles of tort law.
Our tort law has historically recognized the fact that there may be more than one proximate cause of an injury. Jurors have had no difficulty in apportioning fault equitably between multiple parties where negligent conduct is the proximate cause of injuries. The existence of other proximate causes of an injury does not relieve a plaintiff driver under Delaware's comparative negligence statute from responsibility for his own conduct which proximately caused him injury.
Further, I can discern no policy reason why, in an enhanced injury case, the rule should be any different. Public policy seeks to deter not only manufacturers from producing a defective product but to encourage those who use the product to do so in a responsible manner.
Under plaintiff's theory, a jury would be instructed that it should not consider the negligence of the plaintiff in causing the accident. Rather the jury would be instructed to simply determine what injuries the plaintiff sustained over and above what he probably would have sustained had no defect existed and then award the plaintiff damages for the enhancement.
However, this approach ignores the well established rule of proximate cause. It is obvious that the negligence of a plaintiff who causes the initial collision is one of the proximate causes of all of the injuries he sustained, whether limited to those the original collision would have produced or including those enhanced by a defective product in the second collision. Id. at 345-46 (emphasis added). I would follow Judge Terry.
Accordingly, I would quash both D'Amario and Nash for the reasons I set forth above.
HARDING, J., concurs.
Two Cases Consolidated:
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