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D'Amario v. Ford Motor Co.11/21/2001
e of injuries).
Consistent with this approach, the Iowa Supreme Court has held that evidence of the plaintiff's intoxication and excessive speed is not admissible in a crashworthiness case against a vehicle manufacturer. In Reed v. Chrysler Corp., 494 N.W.2d 224 (Iowa 1992), the court explained:
The theory, which presupposes the occurrence of accidents precipitated for myriad reasons, focuses alone on the enhancement of resulting injuries. The rule does not pretend that the design defect had anything to do with causing the accident. It is enough if the design defect increased the damages. So any participation by the plaintiff in bringing the accident about is quite beside the point. 494 N.W.2d at 230.
Some commentaries on the crashworthiness doctrine also support the view that the accident-causing fault of the driver should not be compared with the fault of an automobile manufacturer whose product caused an enhanced injury. See, e.g., Robert C. Reichert, Limitations on Manufacturer Liability in Second Collision Actions, 43 Mont. L. Rev. 109, 117-20 (1982). In contrast to the majority view that all possible causes of an injury should be considered, Reichert stresses that accident-causing fault must be distinguished from injury-enhancing fault; otherwise manufacturers of a defective product will be shielded from liability in every second injury case, a result contrary to the holding in Larsen and contrary to the purpose for which the crashworthiness doctrine was first recognized. See id. at 117-18.
Reichert asserts that because Larsen established "new precedent by holding that a manufacturer would be liable for enhanced injuries even though the design defect did not cause the first collision[,] mplicit in this holding is the rule . . . [that] accident-causing fault cannot be compared with injury-enhancing fault." Id. at 118. He explains:
y definition, a manufacturer in a second collision action has zero percent accident-causing fault, so there is always 100 percent accident-causing fault to be considered in mitigation of a manufacturer's injury-enhancing fault. One hundred percent accident-causing fault compared with a manufacturer's injury-enhancing fault will always constitute a superseding cause of enhanced injuries, thereby insulating a manufacturer from liability in every second collision action and contradicting the holding in Larsen and the axiom. Id.
In other words, Reichert contends, to permit a manufacturer to apportion fault with a third party or the plaintiff's conduct in causing the accident, manufacturers would effectively avoid liability for designing and manufacturing a defective product, and would thus countermine the essential purpose for which the crashworthiness doctrine was established.
Florida Law
The automobile manufacturers urge us to adopt the "majority" view and contend that Florida statutory and case law requires juries to apportion fault among all persons who contributed to the resulting injuries and that enhanced-injury cases do not constitute an exception to this well-established rule. They cite section 768.81(3), Fla. Stat. (1997), which provides for the entry of "judgment against each party liable on the basis of such party's percentage of fault" and this Court's interpretation of the statute in Fabre v. Marin, 623 So. 2d 1182 (Fla. 1993).
In Fabre this Court concluded "that section 768.81 was enacted to replace joint and several liability with a system that requires each party to pay for non-economic damages only in proportion to the percentage of fault by which that defendant contributed to the accident." Id. at 1185. We interpreted the term "party" to include all
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