 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Phillips v. General Motors Corp.3/7/2000
eral Motors briefed us on the content of the precise laws which it claims might be applicable to these facts. However, we do not believe that the purpose of any potentially applicable Michigan product liability law would be to regulate the design and manufacture of products within its borders. Cf. Crisman v. Cooper Indus. (Tex. App. 1988), 748 S.W.2d 273, 277 (" he mere design or manufacture of a defective product is not actionable. To invoke the doctrine of strict liability in tort, the product producing the injury must enter the stream of commerce."). The purpose of product liability law is to regulate in-state sales or sales to residents and to set the level of compensation when residents are injured. See Thorton, 999 F. Supp. at 1223-24
50. Significantly, Michigan courts have recognized that it would not further the purpose of Michigan product liability law to apply it to a similar set of facts. Michigan courts have not applied Michigan law under similar circumstances because Michigan has little interest in applying its law when its only contact with the dispute is the location of the manufacturer. See, e.g., Farrell v. Ford Motor Co. (Mich. App. 1993), 501 N.W.2d 567, appeal denied, 519 N.W.2d 158 (Mich. 1994) (holding that Michigan had little or no interest in applying its law to an out-of-state accident involving an out-of-state plaintiff and a Michigan manufacturer).
51. Other courts have observed that applying the law of the place of manufacture would be unfair because it would tend to leave victims under compensated as states wishing to attract and hold manufacturing companies would raise the threshold of liability and reduce compensation. See Ness v. Ford Motor Co. (N.D. Ill. 1993), No. 89-c-689, 1993 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9938, *5. We agree that stressing the importance of the place of manufacture for choice of law purposes in a product liability case would be unfair. The conclusion that the place of manufacture is a relatively unimportant factor in a product liability case is obvious when we consider a hypothetical case in which all of the relevant contacts are in the forum state except the location of the manufacturer (most likely the fact pattern for the vast majority of product liability cases). Applying the law of the place of manufacture to that case simply because the product was manufactured out-of-state would allow a state with a high concentration of industry to capture all of the benefits of a high threshold of liability and a low level of compensation. Specifically, the manufacturing state could enjoy the benefits associated with liability laws which favored manufacturers in order to attract and retain manufacturing firms and encourage business within its borders while placing the costs of its legislative decision, in the form of less tort compensation, on the shoulders of nonresidents injured by its manufacturers' products. This seems inherently unfair.
52. c. Residence of Parties.
53. The Plaintiffs were residents of Montana at the time they were injured. Unlike the laws of the other states with relevant contacts under ยง 145(2), the purposes sought to be achieved by Montana's product liability laws would be furthered by their application to this set of facts.() One of the central purposes of Montana's product liability scheme is to prevent injuries to Montana residents caused by defectively designed products. In contrast to Kansas, Montana has a direct interest in the application of its product liability laws because its residents were injured in this accident. Montana adopted a strict liability standard in order to afford "maximum protection for consumers against dangerous defects in manufactured products with the focus on the condition of the pr
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Montana Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|