Products Liability Law Reporter

A federal district court held that Hyundai Motor America, Inc., did not owe a duty to protect a vehicle owner from getting shot by car thieves.
Gabrielle Lawton purchased a 2018 Hyundai Elantra in Missouri. Subsequently, while home, she heard thieves attempting to steal the car from her driveway and called out to them from her window in an attempt to scare them off. The thieves shot her through the window. Lawton sued Hyundai Motor America, Inc., alleging negligence and strict products liability. The plaintiff asserted that the defendant had designed the car in a manner that made it easy to steal, and that, for instance, the car should have had an ignition immobilizer. Suit also alleged the defendant had a duty to prevent Lawton from suffering physical harm perpetrated by car thieves.

The defense moved to dismiss the negligence claim on the basis that under Missouri law, it did not owe the plaintiff a duty to protect her from the shooting. The defendant also argued that both claims required dismissal for lack of proximate cause.

Granting the motion, the court found that generally, absent special circumstances or relationships, a private person has no duty to protect another from a third party’s deliberate criminal act. Such a special relationship may include when a party entrusts himself to the protection of another and relies on that person to provide safety, such as between students and schools, common carriers and passengers, and innkeepers and guests, the court said. Moreover, contractual relationships may qualify where a duty is assumed.

The court rejected the plaintiff’s argument that there is a special relationship between a manufacturer of goods and a consumer, finding that this was not a correct statement of Missouri law. The plaintiff also did not allege that the defendant here had issued any warranties related to protecting her from a criminal assault, the court noted, finding that this was the contractual obligation necessary to a finding of a special relationship.

Turning to the issue of proximate cause, the court said that a finding of proximate cause requires more than an assertion that damages should have been foreseen. Here, the court found, even if the defendant’s design had made the plaintiff’s vehicle a target for thieves, the design was not the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s gunshot injuries. The thieves’ independent criminal conduct of shooting the plaintiff constituted an intervening cause that precluded a finding of proximate cause as a matter of law, the court concluded, adding that the chain of causation involved distinct criminal acts by third parties.

Consequently, dismissal was warranted.

Citation: Lawton v. Hyundai Motor Am., Inc., 2024 WL 2318623 (W.D. Mo. May 20, 2024).

Comment: See also Woodruff v. Ford Motor Co., 2024 WL 2270675 (Tenn. Ct. App. May 20, 2024). There, six-year-old Ethan Woodruff was seated in a forward-facing Pronto Belt-Positioning Booster Seat manufactured by Dorel Juvenile Group, Inc. While Ethan was traveling in his family’s 2012 Nissan Juke, which his father was driving, a head-on collision occurred, which caused the Juke to spin into the path of a minivan. Ethan suffered a traumatic brain injury that will necessitate lifelong care, and his father died. Ethan’s mother sued various manufacturer and seller defendants, including Ford Motor Co., alleging that it failed to warn that the Ford-branded seat extender that was used to connect Ethan’s booster seat to the Juke’s backseat seat belt restraint system should never be used with children and child booster seats. Suit claimed that Ford had actual knowledge that consumers were misusing or were likely to misuse its seat belt extenders with child restraints and booster seats yet failed to warn against such misuse. An appellate court granted Ford’s interlocutory appeal, requesting review of the trial court’s denial of its motion for relief from unfavorable summary judgment orders. Reversing the trial court, the appellate court noted that the seat belt extender was useable on its own for its intended purpose, and that it was never intended to be combined with another product like the Dorel booster seat or the Nissan Juke’s rear seat belt system. The court concluded that under the Tennessee Products Liability Act, Tenn. Code Ann. §29-28-102(6), Ford did not have the legal duty to warn about misuse arising from the combination of its product with those of other manufacturers.