Thomas Moraca, Plaintiff-Respondent, and Evelyn Moraca, Plaintiff v. Ford Motor Company, a Corporation of the State…

Summary

The Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed the Appellate Division, holding that a plaintiff may rely on circumstantial evidence to infer a manufacturing defect in a product and that the trial court erred by refusing to instruct the jury on that possibility. The Court also held that liability and contributory negligence issues are not separable and must be retried together. A dissent argued the inference was unsupported without expert testimony, while a concurrence agreed with the result but emphasized that the rule applies regardless of the product's age.