Gaudio v. Ford Motor Co.
Superior Court of Pennsylvania · 2009-06-01 · cited 55×
This case involved a products liability lawsuit by Tara Gaudio against Ford Motor Company and others, claiming that the airbag system in her husband's 1996 Ford F-150 pickup truck was defective under a strict liability crashworthiness theory, causing his death in a low-speed collision after he lost control at an intersection. After a jury trial resulting in a verdict for Ford on the ground that the airbag system was not defective, Gaudio appealed various pretrial and trial evidentiary rulings and jury instructions. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania reversed the judgment and remanded for a new trial, holding that the trial court had erred by admitting evidence of the driver's seatbelt non-use, pre-impact conduct, compliance with government standards, and generalized statistics or risk-benefit analyses, and by failing to properly instruct the jury on the elements of a crashworthiness claim and the irrelevance of certain defenses. The court reviewed the history of Pennsylvania products liability law under Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A and related precedents to explain why these evidentiary and instructional issues required reversal.
