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Clark v. Mazda Motor Corporation3/4/2003
short, for products liability litigation§ 12-420 is not entitled to a substantive-legal-norm status. This is so because for that class of actions the text of § 12-420, as construed by this court's jurisprudence, leaves entirely unaffected the merits of plaintiffs' claims (and of the defendants' defenses against them).
For negligence cases, on the other hand, the § 12-420's effect is quite different. There the merits are indeed affected by the impact of the section here in contest, which makes the use (or non-use) of seat belts unavailable both as proof of one's due care as well as of its want. In negligence cases, both parties are affected alike by the § 12-420 evidentiary bar. Neither is able to take advantage of the statute that requires seat belts to be fastened. The party plaintiff stands barred from showing compliance (by its use of restraints) and the defendant from demonstrating the plaintiff's nonobservance. On the other hand, in the products liability litigation class, the § 12-420 bar, were it to become applicable, would inure solely to the plaintiff's advantage. There it would most surely exclude a party defendant's tendered proof of an absent causal nexus between its own breach of duty and the plaintiff's harm.
KAUGER, J., with whom WATT, C.J., Lavender and Boudreau, JJ. join, concurring in result:
The majority responds to the certified question. Nevertheless, the answer provided is so broad as to provide confusion rather than clarity. Read in isolation, the answer is so encompassing as to swallow the rule of 47 O.S. 2001 §12-420 that generally the use or nonuse of seat belts is not proper evidentiary material for submission in a civil suit in Oklahoma. Neither the practicing bar nor the bench should read the majority to condone the admission of evidence of the use or non-use of seat belts in all manufacturer's products liability crashworthiness cases.
Although the body of the opinion narrows the broad answer contained in the action clause, in the opinion's opening paragraph and in the conclusion of the majority opinion, to conform the answer to the question certified with the applicable law stated in the opinion, the question should be answered as follows:
"Title 47 O.S. 2001 §12-420 prohibits the introduction of the use or non-use of seat belts to impute negligence or fault to a person electing not to wear a seat belt. Nevertheless, if the driver brings a manufacturer's products liability cause which implicates the seat's entire occupant restraint system, the introduction of use or non-use is controlled by our pronouncement in Bishop v. Takata Corp., 2002 OK 74, 12 P.3d 45. However, before evidence of the use or non-use of a seat belt may be introduced, the manufacturer must demonstrate that the crashworthiness of the device claimed to be defective by the plaintiff is so integrated with the seat's entire occupant restraint system as to require consideration of the allegedly defective device and the seat's entire occupant restraint system as one unit."
SUMMERS, J. concurring.
Although I concur generally in the opinion, I also agree with the separate concurring opinion insofar as it would impose a due-process requirement to allow a defendant manufacturer to defend the safety, or crashworthiness, of its product by showing any relevant facts bearing upon the causation of the injury alleged to have been caused by the defendant's having provided an unsafe product.
Page 1 2 3 4 Oklahoma Personal Injury Attorneys
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