## Facts

- Kurt R. Meyering, by and through his conservator, Carolyn Meyering, was driving his girlfriend’s recently purchased 1984 Chevrolet Corvette on a California freeway.
- Two juveniles on an overpass threw a chunk of concrete toward the roadway.
- The concrete penetrated the Corvette’s sunroof and struck Meyering in the head, causing severe injuries.
- The Corvette was designed and manufactured by General Motors Corporation (GM) and sold by the dealer Ball Oldsmobile.
- Meyering alleged the sunroof was made from plexiglass that was too thin and too weak for ordinary freeway use conditions and known roadway hazards.
- He alleged a relatively inexpensive alternative material—Lexan polycarbonate sheeting—was shatter-resistant and would have prevented the concrete from entering the passenger compartment.
- Meyering sued GM and the seller asserting negligence and strict products liability theories based on defective design and related negligent design/manufacture/distribution allegations.
- GM (and the seller) demurred, arguing they owed no duty to protect against the juveniles’ criminal act and that the criminal conduct was an unforeseeable intervening/superseding cause.
- The trial court sustained the demurrers without leave to amend and entered a dismissal. Meyering appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether, at the demurrer stage, an automobile manufacturer’s (and seller’s) duty of reasonable care in design can extend to injuries caused by foreseeable third-party criminal acts, such as objects thrown from freeway overpasses.
2. Whether allegations that a sunroof was unreasonably weak and that a feasible, safer alternative material existed sufficiently state design-based claims in negligence and strict products liability.
3. Whether the juveniles’ criminal conduct may be treated on the face of the complaint as an unforeseeable superseding cause that defeats duty or causation as a matter of law.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment of dismissal after demurrers were sustained.
- The court held the complaint stated viable claims (including negligence and strict products liability) against GM and the seller based on the alleged sunroof design.
- The court held the third parties’ criminal act could not be deemed unforeseeable as a matter of law on demurrer; related foreseeability and superseding-cause questions could not be resolved solely from the pleadings.
- The matter was remanded for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- On demurrer, the court assumes the truth of properly pleaded material facts and reads the complaint liberally to determine whether it states a cause of action.
- “Foreseeability” is used in different parts of tort analysis; courts decide duty as a legal question, but fact-bound foreseeability and proximate-cause disputes are generally not decided at the pleading stage.
- California duty analysis considers policy factors (including foreseeability of harm, connection between conduct and injury, blame, prevention of future harm, burden on defendants and consequences to the community, and insurance availability).
- Intervening criminal conduct does not automatically cut off liability; an intervening act is not a superseding cause if it is among the risks that made the defendant’s conduct negligent, and that determination often depends on facts not suitable for resolution on demurrer.
- A design-defect theory may be pleaded by alleging the product failed to provide expected safety in ordinary use and/or that the design’s risks outweigh its benefits, including allegations of a feasible safer alternative; such evaluations are commonly resolved with evidence rather than on the face of the complaint.

## Conclusion

In Meyering v. General Motors Corp., the Court of Appeal reversed a demurrer-based dismissal and allowed the case to proceed because the complaint adequately alleged that the Corvette’s plexiglass sunroof was defectively and negligently designed in light of an available shatter-resistant alternative, and because the juveniles’ concrete-throwing assault could not be treated as unforeseeable or as a superseding cause as a matter of law at the pleading stage.


Meyering v. General Motors Corp., Previously published at 275 Cal. Rptr. 346, 232 Cal. App. 3d 1163 (1990)