Continental Group, Inc. v. Lincoln Land Moving and Storage, Inc.
Citation | 710 F.2d 368 |
Decision Date | 21 June 1983 |
Docket Number | No. 81-2450,81-2450 |
Parties | 36 UCC Rep.Serv. 611 The CONTINENTAL GROUP, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LINCOLN LAND MOVING AND STORAGE, INC., Defendant-Appellant. |
Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit) |
Paul G. Foran, Doggett & Foran, Danville, Ill., for defendant-appellant.
Michael R. Feagley, Mayer, Brown & Platt, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before ESCHBACH and COFFEY, Circuit Judges, and WISDOM, Senior Circuit Judge. *
This diversity action was brought by Continental Group, Inc. against Lincoln Land Moving and Storage, Inc., alleging that the defendant warehouse operator violated the duty of reasonable care owed to the plaintiff in contaminating the property (cans) of Continental Group that had been stored in the warehouse. The defendant denied violating its duty, and in addition asserted that Continental Group was responsible for all of the damages because it had: (1) been contributorily negligent; (2) assumed the risk of contamination; and (3) failed to mitigate its damages. The case was tried to the court and a $88,003.49 judgment in favor of the plaintiff was entered. The identical assertions made by the defendant at trial are repeated on appeal. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The Continental Group, Inc., ("Continental"), the plaintiff, is a New York corporation engaged in the manufacture of cans. The defendant, Lincoln Land Moving and Storage, Inc., ("Lincoln Land"), is an Illinois corporation licensed as a warehouse operator and publicly engaged in warehousing goods for a tariff. This lawsuit involves millions of cans stored by the plaintiff in a warehouse owned and operated by the defendant.
In 1968, Continental Group began storing large quantities of its empty aerosol cans at Lincoln Land's warehouse in Danville, Illinois. During the early 1970's, various customers of Continental Group complained from time-to-time about the dirty condition of some of the cans they received, more particularly that some cans were contaminated and coated with a grease, a lubricant or other foreign substance. All of these contamination complaints turned out to be the result of manufacturing-related problems. During 1973 and early 1974, Mr. Philip Spletzer, then manager of Continental's Danville, Illinois can manufacturing plant routinely visited Lincoln Land's Danville warehouse every two or three weeks to inventory the cans and to check the general condition of the warehouse but did not specifically inspect the stored cans for cleanliness.
In April of 1974, a Continental customer, Peterson/Puritan, Inc., complained about the condition of 7,475 cans from an earlier shipment of 207,000. Records of the customer and Continental described the problem as "dirty domes--grease on sides of cans" and "excessive dirt on domes and can bodies on a slug basis." 1 On April 29, 1974, Spletzer inspected the Lincoln Land warehouse in connection with the customer complaint. Spletzer noted in a report that the purpose of this inspection was to check out the order and cleanliness of the warehouse and its contents due to a high incidence of poor quality of the cans coming from the Lincoln Land warehouse. He further reported that the warehouse was in a "deplorable condition" and that there was a "black film on [the] white domes of cans" and "a light showing of black oily film." At the time of his inspection, Spletzer informed Lincoln Land representatives that Continental employees would be doing further checking of the warehouse conditions. Approximately one week after his inspection on April 29, 1974, Spletzer again inspected the Lincoln Land warehouse and found that its cleanliness had improved. The plaintiff continued to store cans in the defendant's warehouse and ship them to customers during the summer and fall months of 1974 without complaint.
But on November 14, 1974, Peterson/Puritan, Inc. again complained about the dirty condition of the cans and rejected more than 800,000 of the plaintiff's aerosol cans, including two entire shipments from Lincoln Land. The customer's records described the problem with the cans from Lincoln Land as "very dirty domes--caused line to be shut down--when the can was filled with propellant the dirt formed a ring on the top of the can" and "dirt and dust inside shrink wrap and greasy film on domes."
Some five days later, on November 19, 1974, several representatives of Continental went to the warehouse to inspect the rejected cans. During the inspection, one of the representatives was almost injured by a forklift operating in the area. At this time the forklift was observed spewing forth grimy, black exhaust clouds directly onto nearby pallets of cans. After observing the forklift exhaust problem, the representatives decided to expand their inspections to include samples of the other cans in the warehouse. The plaintiff's inspection revealed that cans that had been at Lincoln Land for as short a time as only 11 days were contaminated by a dark oily film. The Continental representatives concluded that the cans should be removed from Lincoln Land to prevent additional damage and they recommended that all of the cans that had been in the warehouse for four months or more be cleaned before being sent to customers.
Continental began removing its cans from the warehouse within a week after the November 19, 1974 inspection. The cans were either sent directly to customers without being cleaned or were sent to Continental manufacturing plants for cleaning. Those cans sent to the customers without cleaning were sent in the hope that the customers might not reject them, thus saving Continental sales and the expense of cleaning or scrapping them. If the customers rejected the cans, Continental tried to clean them but the effort was both expensive and unsuccessful.
In late December of 1974, at Continental's request, Lincoln Land removed the diesel forklift truck apparently causing the contamination problem and replaced it with one with a gasoline engine. In December of 1974 and January of 1975, Continental attempted to find other warehouse space in Danville to store its cans. The last of the contaminated cans were removed in March of 1975 and Continental was ultimately forced to scrap most of the cans which had been stored at the Lincoln Land warehouse.
Continental filed this action, following the removal of the contaminated cans from the defendant's warehouse and the unsuccessful attempts at salvaging them, alleging that during the period that the contaminated cans were stored in the defendant's warehouse the defendant was negligent in failing to exercise proper care of the goods. The defendant countered by contending that the plaintiff was contributorily negligent, assumed the risk of contamination of the cans and failed to avoid its damages by subjecting the cans to the known dangers of storage at the defendant's warehouse. The district court found the assertions of the defendant to be without merit and entered judgment for the plaintiff:
"Under the provisions of Ch. 26, Section 7-204, Ill.Rev.Stat., and the theory upon which the parties tried the case, the plaintiff was required to prove the following propositions:
1. bailment of its cans to the defendant;
2. delivery of the cans in good condition;
3. receipt of the cans in a damaged condition;
4. in the normal course of events the damage would not have occurred if the defendant had used reasonable care;
5. damages.
The district court did not accept Lincoln Land's contentions that the plaintiff should have been aware of the contamination problem, holding:
The trial court found that Continental Group...
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