Day on Torts
Where a child’s booster seat was only dangerous because it was used in conjunction with an aftermarket seat belt extender, the booster seat manufacturer had no duty to warn purchasers of that potential danger under Tennessee products liability law.
In Woodruff v. Ford Motor Company, No. E2023-00488-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. May 28, 2024), plaintiff’s husband was killed and her children were severely injured in a car accident. At the time of the accident, her husband was driving a Nissan vehicle. Her son sat in the back seat in a booster seat manufactured by defendant. Because the car had recessed seat belt receivers, the husband had added a seat belt extender to the back seat belt and used it on the seat belt securing the son in the booster seat. The seat belt extender was not manufactured by the same company as the booster seat and had no affiliation with the booster seat.
After the accident, plaintiff filed this products liability case against several manufacturers and sellers. (See this post for a separate opinion in this case affirming summary judgment for Ford Motor Company as the manufacturer of the seat belt extender). Relevant to this opinion, the trial court granted summary judgment to defendant booster seat manufacturer, finding that defendant had no duty to warn about a seat belt extender that it did not manufacture or sell. The Court of Appeals affirmed this ruling.
Relying on the Tennessee Products Liability Act and the Tennessee Supreme Court decision in Coffman v. Armstrong International, Inc., 615 S.W.3d 888 (Tenn. 2021), the Court of Appeals agreed that the booster seat was safe when it left control of defendant manufacturer. Plaintiff argued that the booster seat “was defective because its included instruction manual failed to adequately communicate the danger of using a seat belt extender with a booster seat,” but the Court noted that “the TPLA’s provisions link a defendant’s liability to the defendant’s own product, not the product of another manufacturer.” (internal citation omitted).
The Court reasoned:
Dorel is not a seat belt extender manufacturer, nor did it make, design, or sell the Ford seat belt extender Ethan used. The record contains no allegation of a design defect or manufacturing defect as to Dorel’s booster seat itself, i.e., its own functionality. The booster seat complied with all applicable federal safety standards, which afforded it a rebuttable presumption that it was not in an unreasonably dangerous condition. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-28-104(a). Here, what made the booster seat unsafe and what created a dangerous condition was when the purchaser added, aftermarket and from a third party, a Ford seat belt extender made for the front seat of a Ford Focus, in violation of Nissan’s explicit warning never to use a seat belt extender to install a child restraint. These circumstances are more attenuated than those under which the Coffman majority declined to impose a manufacturer’s duty to warn under the TPLA.
Plaintiff emphasized a single instruction in the booster seat manual stating that if a vehicle seat belt was too short, the user should contact the vehicle manufacturer about potential seat belt extenders. The Court rejected the argument that this instruction changed the analysis. First, the Court wrote that “the instruction did not state that the booster seat required a seat belt extender to function or that it would have been safer with one.” Second, the Court noted that no one in this case actually followed that instruction.
Because the booster seat was only made unsafe by the addition of an aftermarket seat belt extender, summary judgment for the booster seat manufacturer was affirmed. The manufacturer had no duty to warn in this case.
The Court of Appeals released this opinion 1.5 months after oral arguments.