Liability: Fasten Your Seat Belt

After duly noting that auto accidents kill 50,000 Americans a year, safety experts generally agree that the use of seat belts would save 10% of those lives and reduce serious injuries by one-third. Convinced by the grim statistics, legislators have made seat belts mandatory on new cars in 32 states and the District of Columbia. Still, studies show that motorists are unimpressed; they fail to buckle their belts 50% of the time. Now the law is beginning to develop a powerful persuader: failure to use a seat belt may well bar recovery in a personal-injury suit.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Kathleen Busick of Milwaukee, she set something of a legal precedent as she inched her family's brand-new Chevrolet cautiously along an icy street. She braked to a stop behind a bus; Electrical Engineer Bruno R. Budner's car skidded into hers from the rear. Claiming assorted injuries as a result of the collision, Mrs. Busick sued Budner for $30,000.

When the case came to trial, it seemed a routine personal-injury suit. It took on a new aspect when Budner cited a state law that requires all new Wisconsin cars to be equipped with two seat belts. Though her new car was duly belted, Mrs. Busick herself was admittedly unbelted at the time of the accident. As a result, the judge instructed the jury to consider whether Mrs. Busick was guilty of contributory negligence by virtue of having ignored a handy safety device that might have prevented her injuries.

Common law imposes on every person a duty to exercise "ordinary care" for his or her own safety. Such care is defined as what "the great mass of mankind" would ordinarily exercise in the same or similar circumstances. And in most states, juries are normally instructed that a plaintiff who fails to take such precautions may not collect; the plaintiff's negligence means the defendant gets off scot-free, which seems to be just what happened in Milwaukee. Once the jury received its instructions, it absolved Budner and withheld all damages for Mrs. Busick.