890
Scalia, J., dissenting
Transport Corp. of America, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp., 30 F. 3d 953, 957 (CA8 1994) (Minnesota law); King v. Hilton-Davis, 855 F. 2d 1047, 1051-1053 (CA3 1988) (Pennsylvania law), cert. denied, 488 U. S. 1030 (1989); Shipco 2295, Inc. v. Avondale Shipyards, Inc., 825 F. 2d 925, 928-929 (CA5 1987) (federal maritime law), cert. denied, 485 U. S. 1007 (1988). Although the holdings of these cases are not precisely on point (since the plaintiff was the initial purchaser-user of the defective product), the rationale of those decisions is in tension with the Court's holding today, and supports what might be called an "object-of-the-bargain" rule. They rest on the premise that one must look to the product purchased or bargained for by the plaintiff in determining whether additions constitute "other property." See, e. g., King, supra, at 1051 ("In determining whether a product 'injures only itself' for purposes of applying the East River rule . . . [one must] look to the product purchased by the plaintiff"); Shipco 2295, supra, at 928; American Eagle, supra, at 145; Casa Clara Condominium Assn. v. Charley Toppino and Sons, Inc., 620 So. 2d 1244, 1247 (Fla. 1993) ("The character of a loss determines the appropriate remedies, and, to determine the character of a loss, one must look to the product purchased by the plaintiff, not the product sold by the defendant"); see also Fox & Loftus, Riding the Choppy Waters of East River: Economic Loss Doctrine Ten Years Later, 64 Def. Couns. J. 260, 264, n. 29 (1997) (citing numerous other cases and observing that "[t]he trend in defining 'economic loss' is to focus on what the plaintiff purchased rather than what the defendant agreed to provide"). These courts have adopted this purchaser-oriented approach on the belief, which I think correct, that it is in accord with the policy judgments underlying our decision in East River. As the Third Circuit in King explained:
"As we read East River, it is the character of the plaintiff's loss that determines the nature of the available remedies. When loss of the benefit of a bargain is
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