Third Circuit Addresses Crashworthiness Claim Under New Tincher Products Liability Standards

In the recent Third Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion in the case of Rupert v. Ford Motor Co., No. 15-1731 (3d Cir. Jan. 28, 2016 McKee, Ambro, Scirica, J.J.) (Opinion by McKee, J.)(Marked "Not Precedential), the Third  Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the entry of summary judgment in favor of a Defendant in a products liability case.  

In this case, the court found that the Plaintiff’s expert report was properly excluded given the faulty support offered by the expert in favor of his opinion.  The court ruled that the expert’s conclusions had not been tested and had only been articulated based upon apparent intuition.   The court affirmed the ruling that, without an expert, the Plaintiff could not establish the elements of crashworthiness. 

This Opinion is also notable in that the Third Circuit held that, under the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Tincher, there was no change to the requirement in crashworthiness cases that a Plaintiff prove that a safer design would have lessened injury.

This Non-Precedential decision can be viewed online HERE.

I send thanks to Attorney James M. Beck of the Philadelphia office of Reed Smith Law Firm.   Please be sure to check out Attorney Beck’s excellent blog, the Drug and Device Law Blog.