East River Steamship Corp. et al. v. Transamerica Delaval Inc. (476 U.S. 858)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 16, 1986 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 476 U.S. 858 · 106 S. Ct. 2295
- Decided
- June 16, 1986
- Term
- October Term 1985
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Blackmun
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Blackmun delivered the opinion of the Court. In this admiralty case, we must decide whether a cause of action in tort is stated when a defective product purchased in a commercial transaction malfunctions, injuring only the product itself and causing purely economic loss. The case requires us to consider preliminarily whether admiralty law, which already recognizes a general theory of liability for negligence, also incorporates principles of products liability, including strict liability. Then, charting a course between products liability and contract law, we must determine whether injury to a product itself is the kind of harm that should be protected by products liability or left entirely to the law of contracts. I In 1969, Seatrain Shipbuilding Corp. (Shipbuilding), a wholly owned subsidiary of Seatrain Lines, Inc. (Seatrain), announced it would build the four oil-transporting supertankers in issue — the T. T. Stuyvesant, T. T. Williamsburgh, T. T. Brooklyn, and T. T. Bay Ridge. Each tanker was constructed pursuant to a contract in which a separate wholly owned subsidiary of Seatrain engaged Shipbuilding. Shipbuilding in turn contracted with respondent, now known as Transamerica Delaval Inc. (Delaval), to design, manufacture, and supervise the installation of turbines (costing $1.4 million each, see App. 163) that would be the main propulsion units for the…
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