O'DONNELL v. Geneva Metal Wheel Co.

• Decision Date: 25 May 1950
• Docket Number: No. 10994.,10994.
• Citation: 183 F.2d 733
• Parties: O'DONNELL et al. v. GENEVA METAL WHEEL CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

183 F.2d 733 (1950)

O'DONNELL et al. v. GENEVA METAL WHEEL CO.

No. 10994.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

May 25, 1950.

Meyer A. Cook, Cleveland, Ohio (Davis & Young, Cleveland, Ohio, on the brief), for appellants.

J. A. Butler, Cleveland, Ohio, and Kenneth D. Carter, Cleveland, Ohio (Bulkley, Butler & Rini, on the brief), for appellee.

Before ALLEN, MARTIN, and McALLISTER, Circuit Judges.

McALLISTER, Circuit Judge.

On May 16, 1944 appellant O'Donnell, while engaged in the performance of his duties at an automobile service station in Chicago, was repairing a rubber tube and tire. He had replaced the tire on the rim of a steel wheel and was inflating it with compressed air, when, during the application of the air hose to the valve of the tire, the wheel suddenly disintegrated and flew apart, striking him with great violence on the right side of his face and head, with the result that he was seriously and permanently injured. O'Donnell and the United States Casualty Company, under certain rights of subrogation, brought suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio against appellee, Geneva Metal Wheel Company, as the manufacturer, alleging it to be guilty of negligence causing the accident, because of defective construction of the wheel, and liable, regardless of privity of contract with appellant, because of its having placed a dangerous instrumentality on the market. Appellants are hereinafter referred to in the singular, as appellant O'Donnell.

At the conclusion of the proofs, appellee moved for a directed verdict on the ground that there was no evidence that appellee was the manufacturer of the wheel, and that there was no adequate proof that it had been guilty of negligence by reason of defective construction of the wheel and placing it upon the market. The district court directed a verdict, and appellant appeals from the judgment entered thereon, insisting that the question whether appellee was the manufacturer of the wheel, as well as appellee's negligence in manufacturing a defective wheel and placing it upon the market were questions of fact, properly determinable by the jury, and that the district court was in error in deciding such questions itself and directing a verdict. It was appellee's contention that the most likely cause of the accident was the application of excessive air pressure to the tire mounted on the wheel.

For a clear understanding of the issues on appeal, the following outline of the circumstances surrounding the accident may be helpful. The wheel involved in the suit was formed of two steel disks. Each disk was concave at its circumference. Placed back to back, with their concave surfaces out, the disks were riveted together with six ferrules, that is, hollow rivets. When the disks were riveted together, a rim was formed around their circumference by the two outwardly concave edges or flanges. On this rim, a pneumatic tire was mounted. The wheel in this case was manufactured for, and used on, a large ballbearing wheel-barrow.

In joining the two steel disks together to form the wheel, the hollow rivets are subjected to a pressure of 140 tons in the riveting die, and the end of each rivet opposite the flange is curled on the underside of the wheel to form another flange, thus holding the two disks firmly together. The designer of the Geneva wheel testified that the wheel was designed by him to withstand a pressure of 120 pounds per square inch. The recommended air pressure for a fourply tire on the wheel was 60 pounds per square inch, so that the wheel, as designed, would have a factor of safety of 100%.

In support of his claim, appellant introduced the evidence of two engineers, one possessing a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering and a Master's degree in physical chemistry, the other, a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. Both witnesses had considerable experience in metallurgy, one having spent eighteen years in the testing laboratory of the Continental Can Company, and the other having been for eight years Assistant Technical Director of the Cosma Laboratories, whose chief work was testing metals for private manufacturers and for the military services of the government. These witnesses testified that the hollow rivets that held together the two halves of the wheel causing the accident were defective; that five of the six rivets had radial cracks in the rolled-over edge of the hollow rivet; that these cracks would have the effect of materially weakening the rivets; and that the rolled-over edge of the rivets also had a thinned-out section where they had been rolled to a point which further weakened them. They gave it as their expert opinion that the radial cracks could have been seen at the time of manufacture and could only have existed before the parts of the wheel separated at the time of the accident, because at that time, the curled or rolled-over edges of the rivets were pulled back through the rivet holes in the disk, and this action would tend to close the radial cracks rather than open them. They further declared that the rivets also contained circular cracks which would tend further to weaken them. Each of the expert witnesses, apart from the other, made his examination of the rivets and the wheel prior to the trial, and arrived at his conclusions, independently of the other. They gave as their opinions, with accompanying reasons based on their examinations of the wheel and the rivets, and in the light of their expert knowledge and experience, that the disintegration of the wheel in question, which caused the injuries complained of, was due to defects in the rivets existing at the time of manufacture, and not to the application of excessive air pressure to the pneumatic tire and tube mounted on the wheel. Their testimony further disclosed that the thinning alone of the rivets, which had been testified to, would cause the two disks of the wheel to be forced apart and to disintegrate if an air pressure of 40 pounds per square inch had been applied to a tire mounted on the wheel. An air pressure of 40 pounds per square inch, which, according to the above testimony, would cause the wheel to disintegrate, would be less than the pressure recommended by the designer of the wheel of 60 pounds per square inch for a four-ply tire, and only one-third of the pressure of 120 pounds per square inch which the wheel was designed to withstand.

With the foregoing evidence of the construction of the wheel and its alleged defects in mind, we come to the circumstances surrounding the accident. Appellant O'Donnell, having repaired the tube and inserted it in the tire casing, mounted it on the rim of the wheel and began to inflate the tube with compressed air to a pressure of 48 pounds per square inch. The tire in question was designed to carry a normal air pressure of 60 pounds per square inch. The air came from a tank having a pressure of between 120 and 180 pounds per square inch. The hose used by appellant had no valve controlling the pressure from the tank. Appellant first applied the air hose to the valve of the tube, causing the air to pour into the tire. He then removed the hose from the valve and applied a gauge to the tube valve which showed the air pressure in the tire to be between 18 and 20 pounds per square inch. He again applied the hose, and again gauged the pressure, finding it to be between 25 and 30 pounds. He did not remember applying the hose again or anything else that subsequently happened when the two sections of the wheel flew apart and caused the accident.

Appellee contends that the evidence of O'Donnell's two expert witnesses as to the defects in the wheel and their existence at the time...