Davidson v. Stanadyne, Inc.

• Decision Date: 07 November 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-1276,82-1276
• Citation: 718 F.2d 1334
• Parties: Debra DAVIDSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. STANADYNE, INC., Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1334

718 F.2d 1334

Debra DAVIDSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. STANADYNE, INC., Defendant-Appellee.

No. 82-1276.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Nov. 7, 1983.

Bean, Francis & Wills, Robert Bean, Dallas, Tex., for plaintiff-appellant.

Shannon, Gracey, Ratliff & Miller, C. Victor Anderson, Jr., David L. Hammett, David Keltner, Fort Worth, Tex., for defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Before GARZA, RANDALL and GARWOOD, Circuit Judges.

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge:

In this Texas diversity case Debra Davidson ("Davidson"), plaintiff-appellant, appeals from a summary judgment rendered against her in her products liability action against Stanadyne, Inc. ("Stanadyne"), defendant-appellee. She claims damages from Stanadyne for severe burns she suffered in her bathtub and shower allegedly caused by the defective design of Stanadyne's single-control bath and shower faucet. We reverse the granting of summary judgment and remand the case to the district court for further proceedings.

I.

The primary facts of this case are for the most part not in dispute. The shower in Davidson's apartment was equipped with a single-control bath/shower faucet designed and manufactured by Stanadyne. Faucets of its design have been used widely in this country and abroad. ¹ With a single-control faucet, water flow is adjusted by pulling or pushing the control knob. Pulling increases the flow pressure and pushing decreases it. Water temperature is adjusted by turning the control knob to the left for hot and to the right for cold. The turning span of the knob between the full hot and full cold positions is 180 degrees.

On July 9, 1980 Davidson stepped into the bathtub and shower in her apartment and adjusted the volume and water temperature to her satisfaction with the control knob while letting the water run through the bathtub faucet. She then pulled up the small valve used to divert the water to the shower head. At this point she was standing with her back to the water and had begun to shampoo her hair when she apparently suffered an epileptic seizure. Davidson's next recollection is awakening one to two hours later in a tub full of very hot water. In her deposition she testified that "I think while I was having the seizure with my body thrashing around that the water got turned up higher." ² Davidson suffered extremely serious burns over most of her body, which have required months of hospitalization and therapy.

Davidson brought suit against Stanadyne in district court alleging that its faucet was "defective and unreasonably dangerous in that it was designed and constructed in such a way as to allow inadvertent flow of full hot water." She also alleged that Stanadyne had been negligent and had breached an implied warranty that the faucet was "safe and suitable for the purpose of controlling water flow and temperature in a residential shower." She sought a total of $1,877,000 in damages.

Stanadyne moved for summary judgment on the grounds that there was no genuine issue as to any material fact and that there was no design defect, breach of warranty or negligence on its part as a matter of law. It also urged that the affirmative defense of misuse was present as a matter of law.

In response Davidson argued that the question of whether the single-control faucet was unreasonably dangerous was one for the jury. She alleged that "[a] rotation of less than seventy degrees to the faucet control will completely cut off all flow of cold water and allow full flow of hot water. Therefore a glancing blow to the control can easily allow a flow of hot water." ³ She also argued that a safety device known as a "scald guard," which is marketed by the defendant and other manufacturers, would have prevented her injuries and that evidence that a manufacturer presently designs a safer product "furnishes an inference that a safer design was feasible and that the existing design is defective." ⁴ She presented an affidavit from a manufacturer's representative that such "scald guards" were marketed as a part of single-control tub and shower faucets, that with such devices "the faucet cannot be inadvertently turned to a scalding hot setting," and that single-control faucets comparable to Stanadyne's and without a "scald guard" were usually priced in a $25-to-$30 range, while those with "scald guards" were $5 to $6 higher.

The district court granted Stanadyne's motion for summary judgment. ⁵ It found that "[t]he producing cause of Plaintiff's injuries was her accidentally striking the faucet and thereby turning it to the full hot position." The court held, however, that "[t]he fact that the faucet may be turned to the full hot position by a body striking it, does not make the faucet an unreasonably dangerous product." Nor, the court held, was it made so by the lack of a "scald guard" which would have prevented plaintiff's injury. The district court concluded that the "product was not defective in its design." It did not consider the plaintiff's breach of warranty or negligence claims or Stanadyne's contention that the facts of this case demonstrated the defense of "misuse" as a matter of law.

II.

The principles governing recovery in a products liability case alleging defective design under Texas law have been recently summarized in Kindred v. Con/Chem, Inc., 644 S.W.2d 828 (Tex.App.--Corpus Christi 1982), rev'd on other grounds, 650 S.W.2d 61 (Tex.1983):

"As established in [Turner v. General Motors Corp., 584 S.W.2d 844 (Tex.1979) ], the predicate for recovery in a defective design case is a showing that the product was defective, that the defect made the product unreasonably dangerous and that the defect was a producing cause of injuries....

"To prove that there is a defect in design which is unreasonably dangerous, a plaintiff must show that the likelihood and gravity of injury from its use exceeds its utility. Boatland of Houston, Inc. v. Bailey, 609 S.W.2d 743, 746 (Tex.1980). In making their decision, the jury may consider evidence of the economic and scientific feasibility of alternative designs, the usefulness and desirability of the product, the ability to eliminate the risk without seriously [de]creasing the product's usefulness or [increasing its] cost." Id. at 830-31.

As we recently pointed out in Carter v. Massey-Ferguson, Inc., 716 F.2d 344 at 347 (5th Cir.1983), since Turner v. General Motors Corp., 584 S.W.2d 844 (Tex.1979), in strict liability products cases Texas has followed the rule that the ultimate test for defective design is whether the product is "unreasonably" dangerous in the sense that "the danger-in-fact associated with the use of the product outweighs the utility of the product." Although ordinary consumer expectations may be relevant in making this determination, such expectations do not of themselves constitute the ultimate standard. Carter v. Massey-Ferguson, Inc., 716 F.2d 344 at 347. We note that Texas has held that a relatively obvious and/or common lack of a simple safety device in an ordinary product may be found by the jury to constitute a design defect. See, e.g., Gonzales v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 571 S.W.2d 867 (Tex.1978) (absence of adhesive or antiskid material on tractor step); Rourke v. Garza, 530 S.W.2d 794 (Tex.1976) (absence of cleats on scaffold boards). See also Bailey v. Boatland of Houston, Inc., 585 S.W.2d 805 (Tex.Civ.App.--Houston [1st Dist.] 1979), rev'd on other grounds, 609 S.W.2d 743 (Tex.1980) (absence of "kill switch" to cut off outboard motor when operator falls out of boat). Expert testimony is admissible on the issue of whether the particular design is "unreasonably dangerous." Gonzales, 571 S.W.2d at 871; Rourke, 530 S.W.2d at 799. Merely because the need for the safety device would not arise when the product was used in its intended manner, does not necessarily mean that the absence of the safety device cannot render the product unreasonably dangerous. Foster v. Ford Motor Co., 616 F.2d 1304, 1310 (5th Cir.1980).

Rule 56(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure states that a moving party is entitled to summary judgment "if 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." As this Court has noted many times, however, the use of summary judgment is rarely appropriate in negligence or products liability cases, even where the material facts are not disputed. ⁶ Marsden v. Patane, 380 F.2d 489, 491 (5th Cir.1967); Gross v. Southern Railway Co., 414 F.2d 292, 296 (5th Cir.1969); Croley v. Matson Navigation Co., 434 F.2d 73, 75 (5th Cir.1970); King v. Avtech Aviation, Inc., 655 F.2d 77, 78 (5th Cir.1981). See also 10A Wright, Miller & Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure Sec. 2729 at 195 (1983).

One rationale for this rule, as applied to negligence cases, was stated in Gauk v. Meleski, 346 F.2d 433 (5th Cir.1965), as follows:

"Because of the peculiarly elusive nature of the term 'negligence' and the necessity that the trier of facts pass upon the reasonableness of the conduct in all the circumstances in determining whether it constitutes negligence, it is the rare personal injury case which can be disposed of by summary judgment, even where the historical facts are concededly undisputed." Id. at 437.

This reasoning is equally applicable in the case before us because in a Texas products liability action for defective design the trier of fact is called upon to decide whether a product's design is "unreasonably dangerous" in light of several factors. As the Texas Supreme Court stated in Boatland of Houston, Inc. v. Bailey, 609 S.W.2d 743, 745-46 (Tex.1980), "Whether a product was defectively designed requires a balancing by the jury of its utility against the likelihood of and gravity of injury from its use. ...