United States District Court, D. Connecticut
PHILADELPHIA INDEMNITY INS. CO., as subrogee of ALMOST HOME DAY CARE, LLC, Plaintiff,
v.
LENNOX INDUSTRIES, INC. and NIDEC MOTOR CORPORATION, Defendants.
RULING ON DEFENDANT NIDEC MOTOR CORPORATION'S
MOTION TO DISMISS
CHARLES S. HAIGHT, JR., SENIOR UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Plaintiff
Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Company (“PIIC”
or “Plaintiff”), as subrogee of Almost Home Day
Care, brought this product liability action against
Defendants Lennox Industries, Inc. (“Lennox”) and
Nidec Motor Corporation (“Nidec”) under the
Connecticut Product Liability Act (“CPLA”), Conn.
Gen. Stat. § 52-572m, et seq. Nidec now moves
to dismiss the Second Count of the Third Amended Complaint
for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be
granted. For the reasons that follow, Nidec's Motion to
Dismiss is granted. The Court also sua sponte
dismisses Plaintiff's claims against Lennox, which rest
on parallel allegations. Plaintiff will be given leave to
replead all claims as specified below.
I.
Facts Alleged
The
allegations set forth in the Third Amended Complaint (the
“TAC”), taken as true for purposes of this
motion, are summarized as follows.
On or
about August 12, 2017, a fire broke out at a property in
Ridgefield, Connecticut owned by Almost Home Day Care
(“Almost Home”). [Doc. 40 (“Compl.”)
¶ 14.] The fire caused substantial damage to Almost
Home's property. [Id. ¶¶ 14, 21.]
Plaintiff
alleges that the fire originated from a defective furnace
designed, assembled, manufactured, sold, tested, distributed,
and/or marketed by Defendant Lennox (the “subject
furnace”), and a defective blower motor designed,
assembled, manufactured, sold, tested, distributed, and/or
marketed by Defendant Nidec (the “subject blower
motor”). [Id. ¶¶ 14, 18, 20.] Prior
to the fire, Almost Home used the subject furnace and blower
motor (collectively, the “subject products”) in
an ordinary and foreseeable manner at its Ridgefield
property. [Id. ¶ 15.] The subject furnace and
motor blower were not modified, changed, altered, or abused
by Almost Home or any other users. [Id. ¶ 19.]
Pursuant
to a property insurance policy issued by PIIC to Almost Home,
PIIC paid Almost Home for the property damage it incurred as
a result of the fire. [Id. ¶¶ 2, 3.] On
August 14, 2018, PIIC, as subrogor of Almost Home, filed its
two-count Third Amended Complaint alleging that Defendants
Lennox and Nidec violated the CPLA by manufacturing,
designing, assembling, distributing and selling defective
products, failing to provide adequate warnings or
instructions on how to operate it, and breaching express and
implied warranties. [See Doc. 40.] On September 10,
2018, Nidec filed a motion to dismiss the second count for
failure to adequately plead a claim entitled to relief.
[See Doc. 47.] In response, Plaintiff has both
opposed Defendant's motion to dismiss on the merits and,
in the alternative, requested leave to amend its complaint
for a fourth time. [See Doc. 51 at 2.]
II.
Legal Standard for Dismissal
Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires the plaintiff to
provide “a short and plain statement of the claim
showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”
Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2). The “principal function of
pleadings under the Federal Rules is to give the adverse
party fair notice of the claim asserted so as to enable him
to answer and prepare for trial.” Simmons v.
Abruzzo, 49 F.3d 83, 86 (2d Cir. 1995).
“To
survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain
sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state
a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'”
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting
Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570
(2007)). Although detailed factual allegations are not
required, Keller v. Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., 751
F.3d 64, 70 (2d Cir. 2014), mere “labels and
conclusions” or a “formulaic recitation of the
elements of a cause of action” are insufficient,
Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555. Plaintiff must, at a
minimum, “plead[ ] factual content that allows the
court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is
liable for the misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 556
U.S. at 678. In determining whether a plaintiff has met this
standard, the Court must accept all well-pleaded allegations
as true and draw all reasonable inferences in the light most
favorable to the nonmoving party. In re NYSE Specialists
Sec. Litig., 503 F.3d 89, 95 (2d Cir. 2007).
III.
Discussion
All of
Plaintiff's claims are governed by the CPLA, which
provides the exclusive vehicle in this state for actions
premised on “harm caused by a product.” Conn.
Gen. Stat. § 52-572n(a); see also Winslow v.
Lewis-Shepard, Inc., 212 Conn. 462, 471 (1989). While
all products liability claims have thus been consolidated
into “a single form of action, ” LaMontagne
v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co., Inc., 41 F.3d 846,
855 (2d Cir. 1994), the CPLA permits a plaintiff to assert
various common law theories of liability thereunder,
Rosenthal v. Ford Motor Co., Inc., 462 F.Supp.2d
296, 307 n. 11 (D. Conn. 2006). See also Conn. Gen.
Stat. § 52-572m(b) (“‘Product liability
claim' shall include, but is not limited to, all actions
based on the following theories: Strict liability in tort;
negligence; breach of warranty, express or implied; breach of
or failure to discharge a duty to warn or instruct, whether
negligent or innocent; misrepresentation or nondisclosure,
whether negligent or innocent.”). Importantly, however,
the CPLA does not “alter the substance of a
plaintiff's rights or the facts that a plaintiff must
prove in order to prevail.” LaMontagne, 41
F.3d at 855 (citations omitted). Consequently, any sub-claim
brought under the CPLA (e.g., negligence, strict
liability, breach of warranty) must sufficiently allege all
elements that would be required at common law. See
Id. at 856 (concluding that the district court
“was correct to assess plaintiffs' theories of
recovery in light of the Connecticut common-law
requirements”).
Plaintiff's
Complaint presents a single CPLA cause of action against
Nidec premised on four underlying theories of liability: (1)
strict liability; (2) negligence; (3) breach of express
warranty; and (4) breach of the implied warranties of
merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
[See Compl. ¶ 27.] While Plaintiff need not
make a pretrial election between these theories, each theory
must itself be sufficient to state a claim standing alone,
and “[f]actual allegations [in support of each] must be
enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative
level.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 545; see also
Kwan v. Schlein, 246 F.R.D. 447, 452 (S.D.N.Y. 2007).
In
moving to dismiss the Third Amended Complaint pursuant to
Rule 12(b)(6), Nidec argues that the Complaint consists
primarily of impermissible legal conclusions, unsupported by
factual assertions sufficient to support a product liability
claim. [Doc. 47 at 3.] The Court agrees and, for the reasons
discussed in Section III(E) infra, also dismisses
all claims against Defendant Lennox. However, Plaintiff will
be granted leave to amend its complaint. See
Simmons, 49 F.3d at 86-87 ([I]f the court dismisses the
complaint for failure to comply with Rule 8, it should
generally give the plaintiff leave to amend. This is
especially true when the complaint states a claim that is on
its face nonfrivolous.”); Michael Miller Fabrics,
LLC v. Studio Imports Ltd., Inc., No. 12 CV 3858 KMW
JLC, 2012 WL 4513546, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 1, 2012) (granting
defendant's motion to dismiss but permitting plaintiff to
amend complaint with more specific factual allegations).
A.
Product Defect and Causation
Nidec
argues that the Third Amended Complaint “fails to
reveal any factual allegations to support its boilerplate
allegations of a defect.” [Doc. 47 at 5.] Specifically,
Nidec contends that Plaintiff has failed to identify a
specific defect attributable to the blower motor.
[Id. at 6.] Plaintiff counters that at this early
stage of litigation, the allegations and facts set forth in
the Third Amended Complaint are sufficient under the liberal
pleading requirements of the federal rules to provide Nidec
“with more than enough notice of” the pertinent
facts and claims. [Doc. 51-1 at 6-7.]
In any
Connecticut products liability action, whether brought in
strict liability or negligence, “the plaintiff must
plead and prove that the product was defective and that the
defect was the proximate cause of the plaintiff's
injuries.” Haesche v. Kissner, 229
Conn. 213, 218 (1994) (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted); see also Faux v. Thomas Indus., Inc., No.
CV89-0233934S, 1992 WL 293230 (Conn. Super. Ct. Oct.8, 1992)
(“[D]efectiveness is an essential element of a product
liability action based on negligence as well as one based on
strict tort liability.”). A product defect is typically
established through direct evidence of a specific defect in
the product's manufacturing, design, and/or warnings to
buyers.[1] Vitanza v. Upjohn Co., 257 Conn.
365, 373 (2001); see also Metro. Prop. & Cas. Ins.
Co. v. Deere & Co., 302 Conn. 123 (Conn. 2011).
Alternatively, if direct evidence of a specific product
defect is unavailable, a plaintiff may use what is known as
the malfunction theory “to establish a prima facie
product liability case on the basis of circumstantial
evidence when direct evidence of a defect is
unavailable.” Metro. Prop., 302 Conn. at 134.
Under either approach, the TAC lacks sufficient factual
content to raise the right to relief from speculative to
plausible. See Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557.
1.
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