Twenty seven years ago today, the Supreme Court decided Waterson v. General Motors Corp., 111 N.J. 238 (1988). Until then, the Court had not spoken about the effect of seat belt usage on principles of contributory or comparative negligence.
In Waterson, a defective rear axle shaft caused plaintiff to lose control of her General Motors automobile and to crash into a utility pole. Plaintiff was not wearing a seat belt, and General Motors asserted that the failure to wear a seat belt should have reduced or barred plaintiff’s damage claim. Plaintiff objected strenuously to motions in limine about the admission of the fact that she had not been wearing a seat belt, but the Law Division allowed the testimony and plaintiff did not object to that evidence at trial. The jury ruled for plaintiff but reduced her award by 40%, finding that the failure to wear a seat belt had proximately contributed 40% to her injuries.
Both sides appealed. The Appellate Division affirmed on both appeals, refusing to address the seat belt issue because plaintiff had not objected to that evidence at trial. On cross-petitions for certification, the Supreme Court granted review and reversed for a new trial on damages. Justice Garibaldi wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court.
The Court considered the seat belt issue even though plaintiff had not objected regarding the seat belt evidence during trial. Her objections at the motions in limine stage, along with the fact that “the issue in this case undoubtedly concerns a matter of great public interest,” led the Court to take up the issue. The presence of a matter of great public interest is an exception to the general rule that issues not raised below will not be considered on appeal (and the issue here had been raised below, in connection with the motions in limine).
Justice Garibaldi noted that caselaw and scholarly articles about the seat belt defense in the strict products liability context were “much more limited” than in the area of negligence cases. She discussed seat belt cases from lower New Jersey courts and from other jurisdictions, and noted that the New Jersey Legislature, unlike legislative bodies in some other states, had “left the status of the seat belt defense in civil litigation to the courts,” though New Jersey did pass a mandatory seat belt law in 1984. The incident in Waterson, however, predated that seat belt law.
After a lengthy analysis, the Court adopted “the following equation”:
(1) The jury determines total damages as if there were no seat belt issue at all. (2) The jury determines the comparative fault of each party in causing the accident and expresses those determinations in terms of a percentage (e.g., General Motors for the defective axle and plaintiff for any applicable negligence on her part, such as if it could be shown that she knew of the defective axle and drove anyway or that she drove inattentively and at an excessive rate of speed). (3) The jury determines whether plaintiff’s nonuse of a seat belt increased the extent or severity of plaintiff’s injuries and whether plaintiff’s nonuse of a seat belt constituted negligence. (4) The jury determines plaintiff’s second-collision injuries or seat belt damages. (5) The jury determines the percentage of plaintiff’s comparative fault for the second-collision injuries or seat-belt damages. The court should inform the jury that plaintiff’s fault for failure to wear a seat belt will be added to plaintiff’s fault, if any , in causing the accident to reduce further plaintiff’s award in an amount proportionate also to defendant’s relative fault in causing the accident. (6) The court determines plaintiff’s recovery by molding the jury’s damages and negligence findings.
Justice Garibaldi acknowledged that this detailed formula “may appear complicated in its rough outline. It is, however, an equation familiar to tort law.” Because the Law Division had not had the benefit of the newly-announced equation, the case was reversed and remanded for a retrial on damages.