Dambacher by Dambacher v. Mallis
336 Pa. Super. 22, 485 A.2d 408 (1985)
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Rule of Law:
In a products liability action, causation must be established by a witness with specialized knowledge and experience directly related to the subject matter at issue. Furthermore, a supplier is strictly liable as a guarantor for harm caused by a product that lacks a warning necessary to make it safe for its intended use, a determination made without reference to negligence principles.
Facts:
- Nicholas Mallis, a sixteen-year-old, discovered a flat right front tire on his grandfather's 1971 Plymouth Fury.
- The other three tires on the Plymouth were non-radial tires.
- Mallis replaced the flat tire with a Sears radial tire, which was not embossed with a warning about mixing it with non-radial tires.
- The next day, while driving Joann Dambacher and other students home from school, Mallis entered an S-curve at 20-25 miles per hour on a wet, leaf-covered road.
- Mallis lost control of the car when the rear slid out during a turn.
- The vehicle went off an embankment and struck a tree.
- As a result of the crash, Joann Dambacher was rendered a quadriplegic.
Procedural Posture:
- Joann Dambacher's parents sued Nicholas Mallis (for negligence) and Sears, Roebuck and Company (for strict liability) in a state trial court.
- Sears joined the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Transportation (PennDot), as an additional defendant.
- Before trial, PennDot settled with the Dambachers.
- Following a jury trial, a verdict was returned in favor of the Dambachers, apportioning liability 45% to Sears, 50% to Nicholas Mallis, and 5% to PennDot.
- Sears filed a post-trial motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (n.o.v.) or, in the alternative, for a new trial.
- The Dambachers filed a motion for a new trial limited to the issue of damages.
- The trial court denied Sears's motions and granted the Dambachers' motion for a new trial on damages only.
- Sears, as appellant, appealed the judgment on liability to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
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Issue:
Did the trial court abuse its discretion by admitting expert testimony on the cause of an automobile accident from witnesses whose qualifications were in general auto mechanics rather than the specialized field of vehicle-road dynamics?
Opinions:
Majority - President Judge Spaeth
Yes. The trial court abused its discretion, requiring a new trial. A witness qualifies as an expert only if they have sufficient skill, knowledge, or experience in the specific field at issue to aid the jury. Here, the subject was vehicle-road dynamics, a specialized area of physics and engineering. The plaintiffs' witnesses, an auto mechanic and a retired auto mechanics teacher, lacked the necessary formal education or specific experience in systematic vehicle testing to opine on whether mixing radial and non-radial tires caused this low-speed accident. For the new trial, the court must follow the strict liability standard from Azzarello v. Black Brothers Co., instructing the jury that a supplier is a guarantor, not an insurer, and is liable if its product left its control lacking any warning necessary to make it safe for its intended use, without injecting negligence concepts like 'unreasonably dangerous' or 'reasonableness'.
Concurring-in-part-and-dissenting-in-part - Judge Wieand
Yes. The trial court erred in admitting testimony from unqualified expert witnesses, and a new trial is warranted. However, I disagree with the majority's guidance on the jury instructions for the retrial. The better approach in a failure-to-warn case is to incorporate negligence concepts. Determining the adequacy of a warning requires the jury to assess its reasonableness, which inevitably involves considering what the supplier knew or should have known about the product's risks. Divorcing failure-to-warn claims from negligence standards, as Azzarello dictates, creates an unworkable standard that could lead to absolute liability rather than strict liability.
Analysis:
This decision solidifies two key principles in Pennsylvania products liability law. First, it reinforces a strict standard for the qualification of expert witnesses, requiring that their expertise be specific to the complex issue at hand, rather than general experience in a related field. Second, and more significantly, the court entrenches the doctrine from Azzarello, forcefully separating strict liability from negligence, even in failure-to-warn cases. This places Pennsylvania at odds with many other jurisdictions that analyze failure-to-warn claims under a negligence framework and confirms that in Pennsylvania, the focus remains solely on the condition of the product (i.e., whether it lacked a necessary safety element like a warning), not on the reasonableness of the supplier's conduct.
