Carson v. All Erection & Crane Rental Corp.
| Decision Date | 03 February 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 14–3243.,14–3243. |
| Citation | 811 F.3d 993 |
| Parties | Kyle CARSON, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. ALL ERECTION & CRANE RENTAL CORPORATION, Defendant–Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
John P. Daly, Jr., Attorney, Golitko & Daly, PC, Indianapolis, IN, for Plaintiff–Appellant.
Kevin C. Schiferl, Blake Norton Shelby, Darren A. Craig, Frost Brown Todd LLC, Indianapolis, IN, for Defendant–Appellee.
Before EASTERBROOK, WILLIAMS, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Kyle Carson was severely injured at work when he fell underneath the tread of a crane that his employer, White Construction, leased from defendant ALL Erection & Crane Rental Corporation (ALL). Carson sued ALL for negligence in Indiana state court, and ALL removed the case to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. Carson contends that ALL had a duty to conduct a reasonable inspection of the crane upon delivering it to White Construction, that ALL breached this duty by failing to conduct such an inspection, and that this breach was the proximate cause of his injury. The district court granted summary judgment for defendant ALL, finding that no reasonable jury could return a verdict for plaintiff Carson because there is no evidence in the record that ALL's alleged breach was the proximate cause of Carson's injury. We affirm.
Our account of the facts sets forth facts that either are undisputed or, if disputed, are stated so as to give Carson as the non-moving party the benefit of conflicts in and reasonable inferences from the evidence. See, e.g., Carman v. Tinkes, 762 F.3d 565, 566 (7th Cir.2014). In July 2012, ALL leased a crane to White Construction, specifically a Manitowoc 2250 Crawler Crane. In the summer of that same year, Carson was working for White Construction at a wind farm in Indiana where his employer had a contract to build wind turbines. Carson worked primarily as a crane oiler, providing general maintenance on the crane and serving as the "eyes and ears" of Joe Dowell, the crane operator with whom he was paired.
Carson was injured on September 20, 2012. On that day, Carson and Dowell were told to move the crane to a wind turbine platform several miles from where the crane started the day. During the long move the crane approached a road with overhead power lines. Carson knew that the crane had arrived at the road long before the power lines were to be lowered so that the crane could cross the road. He signaled for Dowell to stop the crane at the base of some wood matting placed to help the crane cross the road.
Dowell stopped the crane. But it then began moving forward again, and it moved onto the wood matting where Carson was standing. As the crane pushed one end of the matting down, the other end of the matting where Carson was standing began to rise into the air. Carson slid down the ramp the crane was creating and into its path. The crane's treads crushed his right foot, which had to be amputated.
Dowell testified that he took the crane out of its "travel detent," meaning that the crane should not have moved on its own. He said he did not know of anything that would have re-engaged the controls for forward movement. After the accident, the crane was inspected and then repaired by Craig Scholl, hired by White Construction, and by Michael Krueger, a crane mechanic employed by ALL. Scholl and Krueger concluded that the crane had moved forward because a malfunction in the controls for forward motion caused the throttles to re-engage without action by Dowell himself. The critical point for our purposes is that the problem was an intermittent one that was difficult to replicate (and thus even to detect).
To explain, in most crane operations, the operator pushes the crane's two joysticks forward to move forward and backward to move in reverse. Much like an accelerator on an ordinary automobile, which will return to idle when the driver takes his foot off the pedal, the throttles return to neutral if the operator lets go of them. For relatively long movements, however, this crane also had a feature comparable to cruise control on an automobile. The operator could engage a "detent" (a feature that would hold the throttles in place without continued pressure, but which could be released easily by the operator). The detent allowed the operator to keep the crane moving without applying continuous pressure to the throttles. Scholl attributed the unexpected movement of the crane to a failure of the solid-state electrical circuitry for this cruise-control mechanism.
Carson sued ALL for negligence under Indiana law. To prevail in a negligence action, "the plaintiff must prove a: (1) duty owed to plaintiff by defendant; (2) breach of the duty by allowing conduct to fall below the applicable standard of care; and (3) compensable injury that was proximately caused by defendant's breach of duty." Hassan v. Begley, 836 N.E.2d 303, 307 (Ind.App.2005) (citation omitted). The district court held that defendant ALL did owe a duty to plaintiff to perform a proper inspection of the crane upon delivery. The court also found that because defendant did not specifically inspect the travel detent upon delivery, there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendant breached that duty. The district court granted summary judgment for defendant ALL, however, because it found that plaintiff Carson offered no evidence of proximate cause. Carson has appealed.
We review de novo the district court's grant of summary judgment. E.g., Castro v. DeVry University, Inc., 786 F.3d 559, 563 (7th Cir.2015). Summary judgment should be granted only when there are no genuine disputes of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a). We examine the record in the light most favorable to the non-moving party and draw all reasonable inferences in his favor. Thornton v. M7 Aerospace LP, 796 F.3d 757, 769 (7th Cir.2015) ; Castro, 786 F.3d at 563–64.
Before digging into tort law as applied to ALL, which leased the crane to Carson's employer, it is worth remembering what is not before us. Carson asserts no claim against his employer or fellow employees because Indiana's workers' compensation law barred such claims. Carson also asserts no claim against the crane manufacturer for a design or manufacturing defect. Our focus is thus on Indiana tort law applicable to a supplier of equipment or other chattel.
Indiana law "imposes a duty on the supplier of a chattel to conduct a proper inspection which would disclose the existence of a defect." Dutchmen Mfg., Inc. v. Reynolds, 849 N.E.2d 516, 522 (Ind.2006). ALL argues that the undisputed evidence shows that a proper inspection would not have revealed any defect in the travel detent. Indiana law is also clear that "inquiry into the reasonable discoverability of a defect may be proper in evaluating whether a supplier has breached the duty of reasonable care but not in determining whether such duty exists." McGlothlin v. M & U Trucking, Inc., 688 N.E.2d 1243, 1245 (Ind.1997). This appeal thus turns on two questions. First, could a reasonable jury find that ALL breached its duty of reasonable care by failing to inspect the travel detent? Second, if ALL did breach its duty, could a reasonable jury find that the breach was a proximate cause of Carson's injury? We address these questions in turn.
ALL argues that there was simply no way to discover a defect in the solid-state electrical circuitry of the travel detent (the component of the travel detent that failed) because that circuitry cannot be inspected. For support, ALL cites deposition testimony from Scholl to this effect. It also cites deposition testimony from Krueger, who said that he is not aware of a recommendation, from the manufacturer or anyone else, that this component be inspected as part of preventive maintenance on the crane. ALL argues, in sum, that the defect here was not reasonably discoverable, so that a proper inspection of the crane upon delivery need not have included a pointless inspection of the travel detent.
Carson's best answer to this argument is highlighted by an exchange at oral argument. Plaintiff's counsel was asked whether an inspection would have shown the defect. Counsel answered that the defect "certainly was found after the accident." He went on to explain that since the defect was discovered after the accident, it stands to reason that such a defect could have been found if ALL had looked for it before the accident.
That may be right in theory, but it is not consistent with the evidence in...
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