Harvey V. Hardy Case Summary

I. Introduction

There have been at least 112 deaths or injuries reportedly aspired since General Motors Corporation (GMC) released its vehicles with the type III door latches, which one of its engineers reported as problematic, “substandard”, and “unacceptable”. Despite the reported destruction of its entire inventory, GMC refused recall all released vehicles with these door latches and instead preferred to settle associated cases until 1994. One of the most prominent case was Alex C. Hardy v. General Motors Corp., which has been considered as the “largest verdict in automotive product liability history (at the time)” (Butler, Wooten, & Peak n. p.). This paper aims to review this case to better understand the issues involved in relation to tort law concepts, such as the “reasonable man” standard, the “pure contributory negligence” rule, the “active jury reform”, and the “deep pocket” theory.

II.

General Motors resulted to a $50 million jury award to Harvey “in compensatory damages and an additional $100 million in punitive damages”. This enormous jury judgments may be interpreted as a ‘deep pocket’ jury bias against rich defendants (e.g. corporations, governments, and wealthy individuals) that are disproportionate to the observable liability of the parties concerned. Vidmar (217) defined as “a large judgment without much concern for the legal technicalities” wherein “the jury system seems to show a desire for punitive [action] and retribution above and beyond the degree of injury”. If this bias exists in the tort system, it constitutes an ethical problem because the tort system supposedly must uphold the principle of factuality: “liability should be based on a factual determination that the defendant failed to meet certain standards” (MacCoun “Is There a ‘Deep-Pocket’ Bias in the Tort System?” 1). It also promotes two objectives: just compensation and deterrence against future harms (1). If bias exists against deep pocket parties, this system is