Torts: Verdict for Corvain

Like every other U.S. manufacturer, General Motors confronts a new legal threat called “strict liability” — the fast-developing doctrine that a manufac turer may be held liable for consumer injuries without being proved guilty of negligence in the manufacturing proc ess (TIME, Aug. 6). Strict liability lurks behind hundreds of pending suits that claim that the rear axle of G.M.’s 1960-1963 Corvairs caused oversteering and sometimes fatal accidents. But last week G.M. won the first of those suits — and in California, where the doctrine of strict liability is well established. In San Jose, G.M. successfully de fended itself against Doreen Collins, 39, a divorcee seeking $400,000 in compensatory damages for a grisly ac cident in 1962 when she was driving her fiance’s 1960 Corvair on a narrow two-lane highway near El Nido. The car swerved out of control and hit a 16-ton truck head on, killing her fiance and one of her five children. For Plaintiff Collins, Lawyer David Harney called 46 expert witnesses to back the Collins claim that the 1960 Corvair was “inherently defective.” Judge John D. Foley instructed the jury: “The manufacturer of an article who places it on the market for use under circumstances where it knows that such article will be used without inspection for defects is liable for in juries proximately caused by defects in manufacture and design.” G.M. fielded such counterexperts as British Racing Driver Stirling Moss, who stoutly testified that the Corvair was safe, although a G.M. engineer also testified that on 1964 models a heavy transverse spring was added between the rear wheels—thus in fact improving the car’s steering characteristics. In the end, though, G.M. Lawyer John Costanzo won by pinning the fault on Mrs. Collins as an “inexperienced” driver. Though she had driven the Corvair for four months before the accident, under cross-examination she admitted that she had only a learner’s driving permit. Her panic at the sight of the truck on a narrow road caused the ac cident, argued Costanzo. “It had nothing to do with oversteer, understeer, neutral steer or whatever.After 43 days in court, the jury wound up more impressed by the circumstances of the accident than by the configuration of the Corvair. By a vote of eleven to one, the jury acquitted G.M. of responsibility.