Anderson v. Nissei ASB Mach. Co., Ltd.

• Decision Date: 23 December 1999
• Docket Number: No. 1 CA-CV 98-0339., No. 1 CA-CV 98-0304
• Citation: 197 Ariz. 168,3 P.3d 1088
• Parties: Patrick ANDERSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, Cross-Appellee, v. NISSEI ASB MACHINE CO., LTD.; Nissei ASB Company, Defendants-Appellees, Cross-Appellants.
• Court: Arizona Court of Appeals

3 P.3d 1088

197 Ariz. 168

Patrick ANDERSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, Cross-Appellee, v. NISSEI ASB MACHINE CO., LTD.; Nissei ASB Company, Defendants-Appellees, Cross-Appellants.

Nos. -0304, -0339.

Court of Appeals of Arizona, Division 1, Department B.

December 23, 1999.

Review Denied April 18, 2000.¹

John H. Anderson, San Clemente, CA, and Jennings Strouss & Salmon, P.L.C. by James M. Ackerman, Phoenix, for Plaintiff-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.

Renaud, Cook & Drury, P.A. by Charles S. Hover, III and William W. Drury, Jr., Phoenix, for Defendants-Appellees, Cross-Appellants.

OPINION

BERCH, Judge.

¶ 1 In this products liability case, the jury found Nissei ASB Machine Company and Nissei ASB Company ("Nissei") liable for manufacturing a defective machine that caused Patrick Anderson to lose his right arm, and awarded $3,250,000 in damages. Following trial, however, the trial court granted Nissei's motion for judgment as a matter of law ("jmol").² On appeal, Anderson seeks to have the trial court's grant of the jmol reversed and the jury's verdict reinstated. Nissei has cross-appealed, seeking a new trial if the jmol is set aside. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the jmol, reinstate the jury's verdict, and deny Nissei's request for a new trial.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

¶ 2 In May of 1993, Patrick Anderson was working at Star Container Company when his right arm was caught in, crushed, and amputated by a vertical injection, stretch-blow molding bottle-making machine manufactured and distributed by Defendants Nissei. The bottle-making machine is designed to produce plastic bottles by rotating plastic resin through a multi-step operation conducted from four operating stations. First, plastic resin is fed into injectors, where it is heated and compressed. The melted plastic is injected into molds to produce "pre-forms," which then rotate to the stretch-blow molding station where they are stretched into bottles. Finally, the plastic bottles are rotated to an ejection station where they are discharged from the machine.

¶ 3 Each station is enclosed by a safety cage, the entry to which is guarded by "safety doors." At the injection station, yellow "purge guards" are attached by three screws to the safety doors. Opening or jarring the safety doors or purge guards automatically shuts off the entire machine.

¶ 4 From time to time, bottles become stuck in the ejection station and must be manually removed so that they do not jam the machine. Anderson testified that bottles regularly became stuck and that, on the average, he removed at least five stuck bottles a night. It was in removing a bottle that Anderson's arm became caught.

¶ 5 The machine also emits a molten waste material at the injection station, which is referred to as "drool." Drool drips onto machine parts and wires and, despite the connotations of the term, quickly hardens into rock-like lumps, which, if not promptly removed, will damage the machine and render it inoperable. The buildup of drool must be checked and removed at least every fifteen minutes.

¶ 6 Although Nissei distributed a detailed manual explaining the operation and safety features of the bottle-making machine, the manual contains no instructions on how to remove drool. Thus Star employees devised a method for removing it: They would insert a long stick with a hook on the end into the three-inch gap between the purge guards on the safety doors at the injection station and drag it out. Anderson testified that the drool was difficult to remove with the purge guards on because the opening was so small that it was easy for the stick or the drool to hit and jar the safety doors, which would shut the machine down. Once the machine shut down, it could remain down for as much as two hours because every time the machine stopped, the operator had to manually remove jammed bottles, restart the machine, and allow time for the resin to reheat. If the machine were shut down every fifteen minutes to remove drool, significant production delays would occur.

¶ 7 To facilitate the drool removal, prevent the lost production time, and make the machine work as it was intended to work, someone removed the purge guards. Doing so was easy because the guards were attached to the machine only by three small screws, not by rivets or welds. Nor was removing the purge guards uncommon; both Anderson and Tom Kerin, an engineer for Star Container, testified that they had observed purge guards missing from other machines. No one disputed that the machine lacked purge guards at the time of the accident. Anderson testified that scooping drool was much easier once the purge guards were removed because the absence of the guards widened the opening from three to six inches. Thus the operator had more room to insert the long drool-removal stick and drag out drool without accidentally jarring the safety doors and shutting down the machine.

¶ 8 On the day of the accident, Anderson was working his usual shift when he was called by another Star employee to remove a bottle that had become stuck. He went to the injection station and, without opening the safety doors, reached inside the machine to pull the stuck bottle out of the mold. He had previously reached into all six of Star Container's bottle-making machines without opening the safety doors. This time, however, as he reached into the machine, it closed, crushing then amputating his hand and forearm.

¶ 9 After hearing and weighing the evidence, the jury returned a verdict for Anderson in the amount of $3,250,000, for which Nissei was found to be 21% liable. The jury found Anderson to be partly responsible for his own injuries and assigned 25% of the fault to him. The remaining fault was attributed to Anderson's employer, Star Container Company. Nissei moved for a jmol or, in the alternative, a new trial. The court granted the jmol and denied Nissei's motion for a new trial. Anderson appeals the trial court's grant of a jmol and Nissei has cross-appealed. We have jurisdiction of this appeal pursuant to Arizona Revised Statutes Annotated ("A.R.S.") section 12-2101(F)(1) (1994).

DISCUSSION

¶ 10 Anderson asserts that because substantial evidence supported the jury's verdict, the trial court erred in granting Nissei's motion for judgment as a matter of law. A trial court should grant a jmol "only if the facts presented in support of a claim have so little probative value that reasonable people could not find for the claimant." Shoen v. Shoen, 191 Ariz. 64, 65, 952 P.2d 302, 303 (App.1997), review denied (Mar. 17, 1998), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 923, 119 S.Ct. 278, 142 L.Ed.2d 230 (1998) (citing Piper v. Bear Med. Sys., 180 Ariz. 170, 173, 883 P.2d 407, 410 (App.1993)). While a grant of a new trial is reviewed deferentially, a grant of a jmol, in which the trial court substitutes its decision for that of the jury, is reviewed de novo. See id., (reviewing jnov); Koepnick v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 158 Ariz. 322, 329, 762 P.2d 609, 616 (App.1988) (same). In reviewing a jmol, we must view the evidence most favorably to sustaining the jury's verdict, and must not disturb that verdict "if reasonable minds could differ as to the inferences to be drawn from the facts." Adroit Supply Co. v. Electric Mut. Liab. Inc. Co., 112 Ariz. 385, 390, 542 P.2d 810, 815 (1975) (jnov); Huggins v. Deinhard, 127 Ariz. 358, 361, 621 P.2d 45, 48 (App.1980) (same). We must therefore determine whether sufficient evidence supports the jury's verdict. See Lerner v. Brettschneider, 123 Ariz. 152, 153, 598 P.2d 515, 516 (App.1979)

.

I. Products Liability

¶ 11 To succeed in a products liability lawsuit based upon a design defect claim, a plaintiff must establish that (1) the defendant manufactured or sold a product, (2) the product was defective in its design and unreasonably dangerous, (3) the defect existed at the time the product left the defendant's control, (4) the defective condition proximately caused the plaintiff's injury, and (5) the plaintiff suffered damages as a result. See Jimenez v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., 183 Ariz. 399, 402, 904 P.2d 861, 864 (1995)

(citations omitted). The jury determines whether the product is defective and whether the plaintiff suffered damages. See Dietz v. Waller, 141 Ariz. 107, 111, 685 P.2d 744, 748 (1984); Meyer v. Ricklick, 99 Ariz. 355, 357, 409 P.2d 280, 282 (1965). The jury also decides whether the product proximately caused the plaintiff's injuries, unless the facts are undisputed and reasonable jurors could not differ in the judgment. See Kavanaugh v. Kavanaugh, 131 Ariz. 344, 352, 641 P.2d 258, 266 (App. 1981).

A. Defective Product

¶ 12 Nissei maintains that the grant of the jmol was appropriate because no evidence was presented on which a jury could base a finding that the machine was defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous when it was sold to Star Container Company. We disagree. At trial, Anderson presented evidence, with which Nissei's witness agreed, that drool had to be removed every fifteen minutes or it would damage the machine. But Nissei provided no instructions in the product manual for removing drool and failed to inform users of a safer alternative method for removing drool than that devised by the Star employees. Shutting off the machine every fifteen minutes was not a viable alternative method for removing drool.

¶ 13 Moreover, Anderson presented Robert Johnson, a plastics expert, who testified that the machine violated several of the product safety standards set by the American National Standards Institute ("ANSI"). For example, Johnson stated that the machine violated ANSI standard 4.1, which requires that a builder furnish instructions on how to operate and care for its machines. Johnson testified that "there was nothing ... in the manual that admitted [that the machine produced a by-product called] drool nor gave any indication how it was to be removed from the machine...." Additionally, an engineer for Star testified that...