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D'Amario v. Ford Motor Co.11/21/2001
ct to do so in a responsible manner." Id. at 345-46. Thus, the court concluded that " t 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 346.
The Minority View
In contrast to the approach of the "majority" view, the "minority" view, rejecting the application of comparative fault principles, focuses on the underlying rationale for imposing liability against automobile manufacturers for secondary injuries caused by a design defect. The federal district court in Jimenez v. Chrysler Corp., 74 F. Supp. 2d 548 (D.S.C. 1999), reversed in part and vacated, No. 00-1021 (4th Cir. Oct. 19, 2001), explained the essential rationale of the minority view:
The crashworthiness doctrine imposes liability on automobile manufacturers for design defects that enhance, rather than cause, injuries. The doctrine applies if a design defect, not causally connected to the collision, results in injuries greater than those that would have resulted were there no design defect. The issue for purposes of a crashworthiness case, therefore, is enhancement of injuries, not the precipitating cause of the collision. 74 F. Supp. 2d at 565 (citations omitted).
The district court in Jimenez pointed out that the rule of damages in crashworthiness cases also effectively acts to apportion fault and responsibility between the first and second collisions and their respective causes:
First of all, such a rule intrinsically dovetails with the crashworthiness doctrine: Because a collision is presumed, and enhanced injury is foreseeable as a result of the design defect, the triggering factor of the accident is simply irrelevant. Secondly, the concept of "enhanced injury" effectively apportions fault and damages on a comparative basis; defendant is liable only for the increased injury caused by its own conduct, not for the injury resulting from the crash itself. Further, the alleged negligence causing the collision is legally remote from, and thus not the legal cause of, the enhanced injury caused by a defective part that was supposed to be designed to protect in case of a collision. Id. at 566 (emphasis added).
Under this reasoning, concerns about fairness in apportioning responsibility for damages based upon fault in crashworthiness cases are satisfied by the limitation of liability of a manufacturer to only those damages caused by the defective product.
Hence, the primary reason offered by courts excluding evidence of the driver's fault in causing an accident is that the accident-causing fault is not relevant to whether an automobile manufacturer designed a defective product, and, further, that such evidence, if admitted, may be unduly prejudicial to the plaintiff. See Cota v. Harley Davidson, 684 P.2d 888, 895-96 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1984) (holding that evidence of the plaintiff's intoxication and conduct in causing the initial accident was not relevant in a crashworthiness case against a motorcycle manufacturer based on a design defect in the motorcycle's gas tank system); Andrews v. Harley Davidson, Inc., 796 P.2d 1092, 1095 (Nev. 1990) (holding that evidence of plaintiff's intoxication on night of accident was not relevant to whether motorcycle manufacturer's design defect proximately caused plaintiff's injuries); cf. Green v. General Motors Corp., 709 A.2d 205, 212-13 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 1998) (holding that plaintiff's excessive speed was not relevant to issue of defective design but was relevant to issue of proximate caus
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