## Facts

- Howard Piltch and Barbara Nelson–Piltch co-owned a 2003 Mercury Mountaineer manufactured by Ford.
- In 2006, the Mountaineer was in a collision in which the airbags did not deploy; the vehicle was repaired, but the restraint control module was not independently inspected or tested by the Piltches.
- In February 2007, the Mountaineer slid on black ice, struck a wall, and then collided with trees; the airbags again did not deploy.
- Mr. Piltch suffered fractured vertebrae, and Mrs. Piltch suffered neurological injuries.
- The vehicle was repaired after the 2007 accident; in 2009, the Piltches sold it, and the buyer reprogrammed the vehicle’s event data recorder, eliminating crash data from either accident.
- In 2010, the Piltches sued Ford under Indiana law, alleging a defective airbag system that enhanced their injuries in the 2007 crash.

## Issues

1. Whether, under the Indiana Products Liability Act, the Piltches produced sufficient evidence—without expert testimony—to create a triable issue that the airbag system was defectively designed or manufactured.
2. Whether expert testimony was required to establish proximate cause, including whether the alleged airbag defect enhanced the Piltches’ injuries in the 2007 crash.
3. Whether res ipsa loquitur permitted an inference of negligence from the airbags’ nondeployment despite prior accidents, repairs, and other potential causes.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Ford.
- The court held that expert testimony was required to prove both defect and proximate causation for an automotive airbag nondeployment claim under Indiana law.
- The court rejected reliance on the owner’s manual language about deployment thresholds and on lay testimony as insufficient to show the crash conditions required deployment or that a design/manufacturing defect existed.
- The court held res ipsa loquitur inapplicable because Ford lacked exclusive control after a prior crash and third-party repairs, and because plaintiffs did not exclude alternative causes for nondeployment.

## Legal Principles

- Under the Indiana Products Liability Act, a plaintiff must prove a product was in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous and that the defect proximately caused the injury.
- When defect and causation questions depend on specialized engineering, crash dynamics, biomechanics, or safety-system operation, expert testimony is generally necessary; a jury may not infer defect or causation from nondeployment alone.
- Circumstantial evidence cannot substitute for expert proof when multiple plausible non-defect causes exist (e.g., prior collisions, repairs, or improper resetting/alteration of safety modules).
- Res ipsa loquitur requires, among other elements, that the instrumentality be under the defendant’s exclusive control and that the occurrence ordinarily does not happen absent negligence; those elements are not met where intervening handling and technical uncertainty prevent eliminating other causes.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed judgment for Ford because the Piltches offered no expert evidence to establish that the airbag system was defective or that any defect caused enhanced injuries, and because res ipsa loquitur could not supply an inference of negligence given intervening repairs and unresolved alternative causes of nondeployment.


Piltch v. Ford Motor Co., 778 F.3d 628 (7th Cir. 2015)