Stanley Industries, Inc. v. WM Barr & Co., Inc.

• Decision Date: 11 February 1992
• Docket Number: No. 89-1840-CIV.,89-1840-CIV.
• Citation: 784 F. Supp. 1570
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida
• Parties: STANLEY INDUSTRIES, INC., d/b/a Gallery Industries, Plaintiff, v. W.M. BARR & CO., INC., and the Home Depot, Inc., Defendants.

784 F. Supp. 1570

STANLEY INDUSTRIES, INC., d/b/a Gallery Industries, Plaintiff, v. W.M. BARR & CO., INC., and the Home Depot, Inc., Defendants.

No. 89-1840-CIV.

United States District Court, S.D. Florida.

February 11, 1992.

Stephen J. Riley, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Christopher C. Fallon, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa., for plaintiff.

Ronald E. Solomon, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for W.M. Barr & Co., Inc.

Charles P. Flick, Miami, Fla., for Home Depot, Inc.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS' JOINT MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

MORENO, District Judge.

THIS CAUSE came before the Court upon defendant W.M. Barr & Co.'s Motion for Summary Judgment in this matter involving claims of negligence, strict liability and breach of warranty against a manufacturer and retailer¹ of an alleged inherently dangerous product. Having reviewed the written pleadings and deposition testimony submitted and considering the legal arguments presented by the parties, defendant's motion for summary judgment is denied in accordance with the following order.

I. Standard for Summary Judgment

Summary judgment is authorized only when:

the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.

Fed.R.Civ.P. 56. The party moving for summary judgment has the burden of meeting this exacting standard. Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 157, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 1608, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970). In applying this standard, the Adickes Court explained that when assessing whether the movant has met this burden, the courts should view the evidence and all factual inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion. All reasonable doubts about the facts should be resolved in favor of the nonmovant. Adickes, 398 U.S. at 157, 90 S.Ct. at 1608.

The party opposing the motion may not simply rest upon mere allegations or denials of the pleadings; after the moving party has met its burden of coming forward with proof of the absence of any genuine issue of material fact, the nonmoving party must make a sufficient showing to establish the existence of an essential element to that party's case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986).

If the record presents factual issues, the court must not decide them; it must deny the motion and proceed to trial. Environmental Defense Fund v. Marsh, 651 F.2d 983, 991 (5th Cir.1981). Summary judgment may be inappropriate even where the parties agree on the basic facts, but disagree about the inferences that should be drawn from these facts. Lighting Fixture & Elec. Supply Co. v. Continental Ins. Co., 420 F.2d 1211, 1213 (5th Cir.1969). If reasonable minds might differ on the inferences arising from undisputed facts, then the court should deny summary judgment. Impossible Electronics Techniques, Inc. v. Wackenhut Protective Systems, Inc., 669 F.2d 1026, 1031 (5th Cir.1982).

Moreover, the party opposing a motion for summary judgment need not respond to it with any affidavits or other evidence unless and until the movant has properly supported the motion with sufficient evidence. Adickes, 398 U.S. at 160, 90 S.Ct. at 1609. The moving party must demonstrate that the facts underlying all the relevant legal questions raised by the pleadings or otherwise are not in dispute, or else summary judgment will be denied notwithstanding that the non-moving party has introduced no evidence whatsoever. Brunswick Corp. v. Vineberg, 370 F.2d 605, 611-12 (5th Cir.1967).

II. Facts and Procedural History

A. Facts

Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, in this matter plaintiff Stanley Industries, Inc d/b/a Gallery Industries, the court finds the following facts to be significant in resolving the motion for summary judgment. On August 30, 1988 a fire occurred at the Gallery Industries plant. Plaintiff alleges that the fire in plaintiff's facility was caused by the spontaneous combustion of rags soaked in Kleanstrip Boiled Linseed Oil which were used by plaintiff's employees to oil a cutting table on that date.

Defendant W.M. Barr & Co. was engaged in the business of manufacturing, packaging and distributing linseed oil products, marketed under the name Kleanstrip Boiled Linseed Oil. Defendant Home Depot, Inc. was involved in selling the product Kleanstrip Boiled Linseed Oil. Management level employees of Gallery Industries purchased the linseed oil from Home Depot, Inc. W.M. Barr & Co. manufactured the linseed oil purchased from Home Depot.

The two employees who used the oil were brothers from Nicaragua whose primary language is Spanish. For one of the brothers, the job at Gallery Industries was his first job held after coming to the United States.

The label attached to the exterior of the Kleanstrip Boiled Linseed Oil can was printed in English. Instructions and directions for the use of the linseed oil were written on the backside of the label. Warnings concerning spontaneous combustion and disposal of rags were printed on the backside of the label beneath a caption stating: "KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN". The label contained no graphics, symbols or pictographs on either side of the label alerting users to the product's dangerous propensities.

The date on which the fire occurred was the first time that the two Hispanic employees had ever used boiled linseed oil. One of the brothers cannot read or comprehend English. The other could read words written on the English language label but had difficulty understanding their meaning. Both employees testified that they would have sought more information on how to use the product if the label contained warnings in Spanish concerning the flammability of the product.

Before the date of the fire, defendants Barr and Home Depot arranged to jointly and cooperatively advertise, promote and market products in Home Depot's various markets including the Miami market. Home Depot regularly and actively advertised in the Miami market on Hispanic television, on four different Hispanic radio stations and in Diario Las Americas, a Spanish-language newspaper. Just three weeks before the fire, Home Depot, in accordance with its cooperative advertising agreement with defendant manufacturer Barr, placed an advertising order for various products including defendant Barr's Kleanstrip products with Diario Las Americas, with the ad to run on September 2, 1988. Home Depot also employed a translator service to convert English instructions to Spanish for several of its product lines, including between forty and seventy products, which it marketed with bilingual instructions.

B. Procedural History

Plaintiff Gallery Industries sued manufacturer Barr and retailer Home Depot under three counts each for negligent failure to warn, strict liability and breach of warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. Defendant Barr's motion for summary judgment, cast in a style as dispositive of the entire matter, only addresses the liability for negligent failure to warn.² Plaintiff Gallery contends that the defendants failed to fairly and adequately warn the product users of the boiled linseed oil's dangerous propensities because:

a. the language relating to spontaneous combustion was located only on the backside of the label on the product's can.

b. the language in question was in small print, buried beneath the bold caption "KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN" on the backside of the product label.

c. the content of the language in question as it appeared in small print on the backside of the product label was inadequate to fairly and appropriately warn users of the product of the dangers associated with the product's use from the standpoint of causing or contributing to spontaneous combustion fires.

d. the language on the backside of the product label was in English only and contained no pictographs or symbols, and therefore was inadequate to fairly, appropriately and comprehensively warn Spanish-speaking, monolingual product users of the dangers likely to be encountered with the product's use especially the dangers associated with the risk of fire due to spontaneous combustion in linseed oil soaked rags.

Defendants argue that they are entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law because the plaintiff cannot establish the essential element of proximate cause.

III. Analysis

A. Negligent failure to warn

A prima facie case of products liability negligence, similar to an action for common law negligence, requires some evidence that the defendant breached a duty which actually and proximately caused plaintiff's injury. E.R. Squibb & Sons, Inc. v. Cox, 477 So.2d 963, 969 n. 3 (Ala. 1985) (citing Epstein, Products Liability: Defenses Based on Plaintiff's Conduct, 1968 Utah L.Rev. 267, 270).

Under Florida law, a manufacturer and distributor of a product has a duty to warn of the inherent dangers associated with a product when the product has dangerous propensities. Advance Chemical Co. v. Harter, 478 So.2d 444, 447 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985). The manufacturer must provide users with a fair and adequate warning of a product's dangerous propensities. Edwards v. California Chemical Co., 245 So.2d 259, 263 (Fla. 4th DCA 1971). In short, a manufacturer must take reasonable precautions to avoid reasonably foreseeable injuries to the users of its products and thereby assumes a duty to convey to the users of that product a fair and adequate warning of the dangerous potentialities of the products so that the user, by the exercise of reasonable care, will have fair and adequate notice of the possible consequences of the product's use or misuse. Johns-Manville Sales Corp. v. Janssens, 463 So.2d 242, 248-49 (Fla. 1st DCA 1984).

Plaintiff Gallery argues that defendants Barr and Home Depot assumed a...