## Facts

- In 1970, a driver in Arizona fell asleep while operating a 1958 Volkswagen Beetle, left the roadway, struck a sign, overcorrected, and the car rolled and came to rest inverted in a culvert.
- The Beetle’s battery was mounted inside the passenger compartment beneath the rear seat.
- The rollover dislodged and fractured the battery; sulfuric acid dripped for hours onto an 11-month-old passenger, causing severe burns and lasting disfigurement requiring extensive surgery.
- A guardian ad litem brought a product-liability action alleging Volkswagen negligently designed the battery system by placing the battery in the passenger compartment despite safer feasible alternatives.
- Plaintiff’s experts testified the battery placement posed an unreasonable, unnecessary acid-burn hazard in foreseeable accidents and that feasible alternative placements/designs existed; they also noted manufacturers generally did not locate batteries inside passenger compartments.
- A jury found for the plaintiff on a negligence theory and awarded $1.5 million; the trial court denied Volkswagen’s JNOV motion.
- The court of appeals reversed for lack of a prima facie case on negligent design and proximate cause; the state supreme court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to submit negligent design to the jury without expert testimony precisely describing what a reasonably careful automobile designer would have done in 1958.
2. Whether the driver’s conduct in falling asleep and losing control was a superseding cause that severed proximate causation between the alleged design negligence and the child’s injuries.
3. What role industry custom and practice plays in determining the negligence standard of care in a design-defect case.

## Decision

- The Arizona Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and reinstated the trial court judgment on the jury verdict.
- The court held the plaintiff presented sufficient evidence for a jury to find negligent design based on expert testimony, evidence of feasible alternatives, and reasonable inferences from the accident and injuries.
- The court held the evidence supported proximate cause; the driver’s negligence was foreseeable and therefore not a superseding cause relieving Volkswagen of liability.
- The court held industry custom and practice is relevant and admissible but not conclusive on whether conduct met the standard of reasonable care.

## Legal Principles

- In negligent-design product liability, a plaintiff may prove unreasonable design through expert testimony, feasible-alternative evidence, and circumstantial evidence permitting common-sense inferences; highly specific reconstruction of a historical industry standard is not required in every case.
- Industry custom and practice is evidence of reasonableness and feasibility, but it does not set the legal standard of care; the standard remains reasonable prudence under the circumstances.
- An intervening cause becomes a superseding cause only when it is unforeseeable and, in hindsight, abnormal or extraordinary such that it should be treated as the sole legal cause of the injury.
- Foreseeable driver error and foreseeable accident sequences do not, by themselves, break causation between a design defect and resulting occupant injuries.

## Conclusion

The court reinstated a negligent-design verdict against Volkswagen, holding that the jury could infer unreasonable danger from expert and circumstantial evidence, that foreseeable driver negligence was not a superseding cause, and that industry custom is relevant but not determinative of reasonable care.


Rossell v. Volkswagen of Am., 147 Ariz. 160, 709 P.2d 517 (Ariz. 1985)