Demedeiros v. Koehring Co., s. 82-1542

• Decision Date: 01 June 1983
• Docket Number: 82-1543,Nos. 82-1542,s. 82-1542
• Citation: 709 F.2d 734
• Parties: 13 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 959 Joao DeMEDEIROS, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. KOEHRING CO., et al., Defendants, Appellees, v. PARKER BROTHERS CO., Third-Party Defendant, Appellee. Joao DeMEDEIROS, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. KOEHRING CO., et al., Defendants, Appellants, v. PARKER BROTHERS CO., Third-Party Defendant, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 734

709 F.2d 734

13 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 959

Joao DeMEDEIROS, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. KOEHRING CO., et al., Defendants, Appellees, v. PARKER BROTHERS CO., Third-Party Defendant, Appellee.

Joao DeMEDEIROS, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. KOEHRING CO., et al., Defendants, Appellants, v. PARKER BROTHERS CO., Third-Party Defendant, Appellee.

Nos. 82-1542, 82-1543.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Argued Jan. 5, 1983.

Decided June 1, 1983.

Robert W. Cornell, Boston, Mass., with whom Cornell & Gollub, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for Koehring Co., et al.

Jeffrey S. Stern, Boston, Mass., with whom Tina M. Traficanti, and Sugarman, Rogers, Barshak & Cohen, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for Joao DeMedeiros, et al.

Francis L. Swift, Boston, Mass., for Parker Brothers Co.

Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, ^* CAMPBELL and BREYER, Circuit Judges.

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Chief Judge. ^**

Joao DeMedeiros, while working at a factory in Massachusetts, suffered the amputation of portions of three fingers of his right hand as he was attempting to clear a jammed machine. Alleging that the machine, a model 2025 thermoformer manufactured by Brown Machine Company ("Brown"), ¹ had been negligently designed, Joao and his wife, Maria, brought this diversity suit in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts seeking compensation for his injuries and her consequent loss of consortium. The defendants, which we will refer to collectively as "Brown," filed a third-party complaint against Parker Brothers Company ("Parker"), Joao's employer, alleging that Parker's negligent maintenance of the machine contributed to the accident. The contribution claim was severed from the main cause and subsequently dismissed by the district court.

In a trial bifurcated on the issues of liability and damages, the jury found in favor of Joao and Maria and assessed their damages at $75,000 and $7,500, respectively. After reducing Joao's award to reflect the jury's finding of 20 percent comparative negligence, the district court entered judgment on the verdict from which both parties have appealed. Brown claims that its motion for a directed verdict at the close of the evidence on liability should have been granted. Brown also argues that its third-party action against Parker was improperly dismissed. Joao contends that the district court improperly admitted evidence that he was receiving workmen's compensation benefits and failed to instruct the jury appropriately regarding its relevance. He asks for a new trial limited to the issue of damages.

I.

Joao, a native of the Azores, had been employed at Parker's Taunton, Massachusetts plant from 1968. On July 15, 1981 Joao was working as a "set-up" man. His responsibilities included clearing jams on the thermoformer machine. The machine, approximately 20 feet long, four feet wide, and seven feet tall, was designed automatically to heat sheets of plastic at the oven station, to mold the heated plastic into the desired shapes at the forming station, and to score or trim the shaped plastic sheets at the trimming station. Every twelve seconds the metal trim die would descend upon the lower die and score the formed plastic. After the sheets were trimmed they were removed from the machine and taken to a work table where the plastic products were popped out of the sheets. The forming station and the trimming station, which together measured roughly six feet in length, were enclosed by a box-like metal grate or cage. This protective barrier extended from the working level of the machine, roughly four feet above the floor, to a point roughly six feet above the floor. Thus, the cage blocked employee access to the trimming and forming stations and would prevent a worker from inadvertently reaching into the machine and suffering injury. The barrier did not extend across the top of the machine, however, and it was possible for an employee standing on a chair to reach over and into the enclosed sections of the machine. A single gate located near the forming station provided limited employee access to that section of the machine.

The machine was electrically powered and was controlled by eight switches, arrayed in four rows of two per row, on a rectangularly shaped control panel. At the panel's upper left a rotary switch turned the machine's power on and off. To its right was a light which was illuminated when the machine was in operation. Directly below the power switch, a rotary "form station switch" controlled the power to the forming dies. To the right of the form switch was a button that would incrementally advance the plastic through the machine. A toggle switch directly below the form switch controlled the machine's hydraulic system. To its right another toggle switch, known as the "blow form station," controlled compressed air. A toggle switch located at the lower left of the control panel would, when actuated, delay the operation of the trim die. Another toggle located at the lower right permitted an operator to turn off, not merely delay, the trim station. The evidence suggested that these two trim toggle switches were between three and six inches apart. Once these switches were properly set, it was unnecessary for an employee to control manually the operation of the machine.

Shortly before the accident, the supervisor, John O'Neill, was informed that plastic sheets were jamming in the trim die and requested Joao to clear the machine. Joao went to the control panel intending to turn off the toggle switch on the lower right which controlled power to the trim station. The parties dispute whether Joao actually turned off the form switch or the trim delay switch, but it is clear that he failed to turn off the trim station switch. Unable to reach the jam at the trim die station through the forming station access gate, Joao placed a chair next to the machine and reached over the barrier cage to remove the plastic from the trim die. As he reached into the machine, the upper die descended and cut off parts of three of his fingers.

Dr. Igor Paul, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testified that, in his opinion, the machine was defectively designed in four respects. First, he testified that the barrier cage should have had four interlocked access doors, two on each side of the machine. These doors would have permitted safe access to the interior of the machine because the interlocks, devices that resemble the mechanism that turns a refrigerator light on and off, would have automatically shut off the machine's electrical power supply when the doors were opened. Dr. Paul testified that at the time the machine was manufactured, interlocked access doors, a common industrial safety feature, would have cost $50 to install. Second, Dr. Paul testified that the machine was defective in that there were no easily accessible emergency switches for immediate shut down of the machine. There was evidence that, at the time of the accident, Joao may have been groping for such a switch or at least that his left hand was near a position where such a switch might have readily been installed. Third, Dr. Paul testified that the four tightly clustered toggle switches on the control panel were confusing and apparently contributed to Joao's mistaken failure to turn off the trim station. He viewed their close proximity, and similar appearance and function as a defect in design. Fourth, he stated that the machine was defective because there were no warnings attached to the machine describing the risks involved in working on the machine and no instructions explaining the proper use of certain wooden safety blocks that had been included with the machine. Joao testified that he had never been instructed in the use of such blocks.

Plaintiffs also introduced evidence that Brown had received post-sale information concerning hazards associated with various features of the machine that it never communicated to Parker. Brown stipulated that it had been informed of three instances in which an operator of a similar machine had mistakenly turned off the wrong toggle switch. The employee responsible for handling Brown's products liability claims testified that the control panel had been redesigned to replace three of the four toggle switches with rotary type switches. A few months after the machine in question was sold, moreover, Brown redesigned the single access gate in the barrier to include interlocks. Finally, the instruction manuals that Brown shipped with later thermoformers contained for the first time a specific description of the use of the safety blocks in connection with maintenance. Parker was not apprised of these developments.

Responding to special questions, the jury found that Brown had negligently designed the thermoformer and had failed to warn of certain hidden or latent defects in the machine--both those existing at the time of the sale and those discovered after the sale. The jury further found that the breach of each of these duties was a proximate cause of Joao's injuries. In assessing comparative fault for the accident, the jury found that 80 percent of Joao's injuries was attributable to Brown's negligence and that 20 percent was attributable to his own fault.

II.

We first consider the propriety of the district court's refusal to grant defendants' motion for a directed verdict at the close of evidence. Under Massachusetts law, the role of the reviewing court is limited to determining whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, there was any combination of circumstances from which a rational inference may have been drawn in favor of the plaintiff. See Uloth v. City Tank Corp., 376 Mass. 874, 876, 384 N.E.2d 1188, 1190 (1978); Stewart v. Roy Bros., 358 Mass. 446, 448, 265 N.E.2d 357, 359 (1970). We conclude that the district court properly denied defendants' motion.

Brown argues that the evidence concerning...