COLUMBIA, S.C. (Legal Newsline) - Ford might be found liable for the wrongful death of a man who committed suicide after being injured by an automotive airbag, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in a decision advising a federal appeals court on a disputed question of state law.
John Harley Wickersham was seriously injured in an auto accident in which the airbag deployed while he was leaning into the passenger seat. He committed suicide several months later, and his widow sued Ford, blaming it for his injuries and subsequent death.
Ford removed the case to U.S. District Court in South Carolina, where it argued suicide is an intervening act that breaks any chain of causation between the deployment of the airbag and his death. The court, applying South Carolina law, ruled that Wickersham’s widow could win her wrongful death claim if she proved the airbag was defective and caused injuries that produced an “uncontrollable impulse” to commit suicide from the pain.
Ford also argued Wickersham was partly responsible for his injuries because he wasn’t seated properly before the accident occurred. The jury found the airbag was defective and caused the injuries that in turn were to blame for his suicide. The jury also found Wickersham was 30% to blame for his injuries.
Ford appealed and the Fourth Circuit asked South Carolina high court to answer whether state law recognizes an “uncontrollable impulse” exception to the general rule that suicide breaks the causal chain required in wrongful death claims. (Under the landmark Erie v. Tomkins decision, federal courts must apply the law of the state in which a claim arises.)
In a Dec. 9 ruling, the South Carolina Supreme Court found that state law doesn’t allow for the blanket rejection of wrongful death claims over suicide. Instead, the court must first determine, as a matter of law, whether the suicide was unforeseeable, which would eliminate liability for the defendant. If the court rules the suicide was foreseeable, then the plaintiff must convince the jury the defendant’s acts caused an “involuntary and uncontrollable impulse to commit suicide.”
The court also ruled that while whether Wickersham was responsible for causing the accident was irrelevant to claims about the crashworthiness of the airbags, a plaintiff might sometimes be partly responsible for increasing his injures. In this case, however, the court said Wickersham’s seating position wasn’t relevant to Ford’s liability.