## Facts

- Wilma Gnirk co-owned and drove a 1976 Ford LTD with her thirteen-month-old son in the front seat, restrained by a seat belt.
- After stopping to open a fence gate, she shifted the gear selector into park, left the engine running, and exited the vehicle.
- The vehicle shifted from park to reverse, moved backward, struck a post, then moved forward into a stock dam.
- Gnirk ran after the moving vehicle and repeatedly attempted to enter it to stop it but failed.
- The vehicle became fully submerged with the child inside; Gnirk, unable to swim, entered the water but could not locate the car and then sought help from a nearby farmhouse.
- Gnirk alleged severe emotional distress with physical and psychological consequences, including depression, insomnia, permanent psychological injury, and physical illness.
- She pursued an emotional-distress claim tied to alleged product defect under Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A (with the court noting similar principles to implied-warranty theories).

## Issues

1. Whether Gnirk was a mere “bystander” or a “user” of the product for purposes of a duty supporting an emotional-distress claim under strict products liability.
2. Whether South Dakota law required contemporaneous physical impact and injury to recover for emotional distress, or whether alleged physical manifestations of distress could suffice.
3. Whether the South Dakota wrongful-death statute provided the exclusive remedy for damages arising from the child’s death, thereby barring a separate emotional-distress claim.

## Decision

- The court denied Ford’s motion for summary judgment.
- The court treated Gnirk as a user of the allegedly defective vehicle, not a mere bystander, supporting an independent duty owed to her under § 402A.
- The court held that the absence of a contemporaneous physical impact did not entitle Ford to judgment as a matter of law where the plaintiff alleged serious distress with physical manifestations.
- The court rejected Ford’s argument that the wrongful-death statute displaced the emotional-distress claim because the claim was based on an independent duty owed to Gnirk as a product user.

## Legal Principles

- A person directly using an allegedly defective product may assert an emotional-distress claim grounded in strict products liability based on a duty owed to that user, even when the injury event also harms another person.
- Emotional-distress damages are not necessarily barred solely because the plaintiff lacked contemporaneous physical impact, where the distress is alleged to have produced substantial physical or psychological injury and causation remains fact-bound.
- Wrongful-death statutory limits do not automatically preclude a separate tort-based emotional-distress claim when the plaintiff’s damages are asserted as personal injuries arising from an independent duty owed to the plaintiff.

## Conclusion

The court allowed the plaintiff’s products-liability-based emotional-distress claim to proceed, concluding that she was a user owed an independent duty, that lack of contemporaneous impact did not mandate dismissal given alleged physical manifestations, and that wrongful-death limitations did not foreclose her separate claim.


Gnirk v. Ford Motor Co., 572 F. Supp. 1201 (D.S.D. 1983)