Products Liability Law Reporter

The Georgia Supreme Court held that Ga. Code Ann. §51-12-33, which codifies the doctrine of comparative negligence, applies to strict products liability claims.

Adrian Johns was injured when the front brake of his Suzuki motorcycle failed. He and his wife sued Suzuki Motor Corp. and its subsidiary, Suzuki Motor of America, Inc., alleging strict products liability, negligence, and loss of consortium. The plaintiffs claimed that a design defect in the front brake’s master cylinder led to corrosion and brake fluid leakage and that Suzuki had issued a recall notice warning about a safety defect in the front brake master cylinder approximately two months after Johns’s incident. Johns also admitted during trial that he had not changed the brake fluid every two years, as instructed in the motorcycle owner’s manual.

The jury awarded $10.5 million to Johns and $2 million to his wife. The jury apportioned fault at 49% to Johns and 51% to the defendants. The trial court reduced the plaintiffs’ award and denied their request for prejudgment interest. The plaintiffs appealed, arguing that the trial court had erred in reducing the damage awards under §51-12-33. The intermediate appellate court affirmed the judgment.

Affirming the lower appellate court ruling, the state high court noted that §51-12-33 provides that in personal injury lawsuits, a trier of fact shall determine the plaintiff’s percentage of fault, if any, and the judge shall reduce the damages award in proportion to this percentage. Moreover, the court said, subsection (g) of the statute provides that plaintiffs 50% or more at fault are not entitled to receive any damages. The court found that the plaintiffs’ strict liability claim fits within the statute’s plain language, which does not differentiate lawsuits depending on the legal theories on which they are based.

The court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that even if §51-12-33 applies to their claim, the court should carve out an exception for strict liability claims. In enacting the statute in 2005, the court reasoned, the legislature supplanted previous court decisions holding that comparative fault was inapplicable to strict liability products liability claims. The court also noted that comparative negligence, which considers a plaintiff’s responsibility or fault, is not incompatible with a strict products liability claim and that there are competing policy arguments for and against consideration of a consumer’s contribution to his or her injuries in products liability suits.

Finding that the state legislature had weighed these competing policy decisions when enacting §51-12-33, the court ruled that the lower appellate court had not erred in holding that the statute applied to the plaintiffs’ claims.

Citation: Johns v. Suzuki Motor of Am., Inc., 2020 WL 6122133 (Ga. Oct. 19, 2020).