Hans v. Volvo Trucks North America Inc.
Page 71
[328] In allowing the appeal and ordering a new trial the Nova Scotia Court of
Appeal explicitly rejected the trial judge’s conclusion that allowing the jury to infer
negligence from evidence related to the “defect” is reasoning that falls within the
definition of strict liability. At paras. 80 and 81 the Court wrote:
[80]
I don’t behold any hovering spectre of strict liability. The judge and
GMC confuse liability without negligence with the jury’s function of deciding
whether or not to reasonably infer negligence.
[81]
Drawing inferences is standard fare for juries. An inference is a
finding deduced or induced from a premise without direct evidence of the
inferred fact. It is a factual jump on the reasoning path. The judge ensures
that the span is not so broad or irrational that a reasonable jury would
stumble. Otherwise the system trusts the jury’s common sense and agility to
mind the gap and land softly. To resolve the non-suit motion simply because
there is no direct evidence of GMC’s standard of care for rack and pinion
steering assemblies, is to emasculate the jury’s function of assessing whether
or not to reasonably infer the standard’s particulars from appropriate
evidence. In Grant v. Australian Knitting Mills Limited, [1936] A.C. 85 (H.L.),
pp. 96 and 101, Lord Wright, in well known extracts, discussed the process of
inference from circumstantial evidence in a products liability case:
... [The defendant’s counsel] contended that the appellant’s case
involved arguing in a circle; his argument, he said, was that the
garments must have caused the dermatitis because they contained
excess sulphites, and must have contained excess sulphites because
they caused the disease: but nought, he said, added to nought still is
no more than nought. This, however, does not do justice either to the
process of reasoning by way of probable inference which has to do so
much in human affairs, or to the nature of circumstantial evidence in
law courts. Mathematical, or strict logical, demonstration is generally
impossible: juries are in practice told that they must act on such
reasonable balance of probabilities as would suffice to determine a
reasonable man to take a decision in the grave affairs of life. Pieces
of evidence, each by itself insufficient, may together constitute a
significant whole, and justify by their combined effect a conclusion.
...
But when the position of the manufacturers is considered, different
questions arise: there is no privity of contract between the appellant
and the manufacturers: between them the liability, if any, must be in
tort, and the gist of the cause of action is negligence. The facts set
out in the foregoing show, in their Lordships’ judgment, negligence in
manufacture. According to the evidence, the method of manufacture
was correct: the danger of excess sulphites being left was
recognized and was guarded against: the process was intended to
be fool proof. If excess sulphites were left in the garment, that could
only be because some one was at fault. The appellant is not required
to lay his finger on the exact person in all the chain who was
responsible, or to specify what he did wrong. Negligence is found as