Doyle v. White Metal Rolling and Stamping Corp.

• Decision Date: 29 June 1993
• Docket Number: No. 1-91-2960,1-91-2960
• Citation: 618 N.E.2d 909,188 Ill.Dec. 339,249 Ill.App.3d 370
• Court: United States Appellate Court of Illinois
• Parties: , 188 Ill.Dec. 339, Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 13,684 John A. DOYLE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. WHITE METAL ROLLING AND STAMPING CORPORATION, and Sears, Roebuck & Company, Defendants-Appellants.

Page 909

618 N.E.2d 909

249 Ill.App.3d 370, 188 Ill.Dec. 339,

Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 13,684

John A. DOYLE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. WHITE METAL ROLLING AND STAMPING CORPORATION, and Sears, Roebuck & Company, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 1-91-2960.

Appellate Court of Illinois,

First District, Second Division.

June 29, 1993.

French, Kezelis & Kominiarek, P.C., Chicago (Algimantas Kezelis, Russell P. Veldenz, Robert A. Kezelis, of counsel), for defendants-appellants.

Terrence K. Hegarty & Assoc., Ltd., Chicago (Terrence K. Hegarty, James S. Smith, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellee.

Justice SCARIANO delivered the opinion of the court:

Plaintiff John Doyle was injured on November 13, 1982, after falling off of a stepladder manufactured by codefendant White Metal Rolling and Stamping Corporation (White Metal) and sold by codefendant Sears, Roebuck & Company (Sears) to plaintiff's employer, the Joliet Correctional Center (JCC).

Plaintiff filed a products liability action against defendants on February 13, 1985, count I of which alleged that the ladder "was unreasonably dangerous for users because [it] failed to perform in a manner reasonably expected since it was incapable of sustaining human weight when used in a foreseeable manner without collapsing." The second count charged that the ladder was unreasonably dangerous for users because the rear rails were too weak and the steps were too narrow. ¹ After defendants' motions to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action were denied, the cause was tried to a jury wherein the following pertinent facts were adduced.

The Injury

Plaintiff testified that on November 13, 1982, he was working his usual day shift as a stationary engineer at the JCC. At about 8:15, he went into the powerhouse in order to obtain a nipple or a pet cock, both of which were contained in a milk crate atop a cabinet along the north wall of the powerhouse. The cabinet was six feet tall, and there was an aisle of approximately 54 inches between it and a watertank to the south.

Plaintiff, who at the time of the incident was 5 feet, 7 inches tall, and weighed 162 pounds, removed from the storage area a five-foot aluminum ladder which had just arrived the previous day. He placed it on the floor with all four of its legs on the ground facing east, two inches in front of the cabinet (on his left) directly under the milk crate. After extending its spreader arms and bucket tray, he climbed onto the second step and reached into the crate with his right hand while holding on to the top step of the ladder with his left hand. Approximately three minutes later, he sensed that the ladder was beginning to collapse; consequently, he grabbed the top of the ladder with both hands in order to steady it, but the ladder went forward and plaintiff's right leg slid between the second and third steps and struck the ground. Plaintiff eventually ended up on the ground atop the ladder with his right leg still wedged between the second and third steps. He also noticed while he was lying on the ground that the right spreader arm had buckled and was twisted out to the right, and that the right rear leg of the ladder was also buckled.

As soon as plaintiff fell to the ground, he screamed for help because he could not remove his leg, which had bones protruding through his skin, from the ladder. As he writhed in pain, he crawled to the north wall and extracted his leg from the aluminum ladder. Plaintiff then tried unsuccessfully to hop on his left leg to a phone on the wall. Ultimately, he crawled to the phone, called for help, and then scrambled to the powerhouse door in order to allow entrance into the facility.

Gaylon Yates, the shift commander on duty at the time of the accident, testified that he responded to a call to help plaintiff. He arrived about five or ten minutes after the incident and immediately saw that plaintiff's leg was badly damaged and that he was in severe pain. In response to Yates' question as to what had happened, plaintiff stated that "the ladder buckled out under [me] causing [me] to fall off of it." After having his leg stabilized with an air splint, plaintiff was transported by ambulance to the Silver Cross Hospital.

Plaintiff's treating physician, Michael Greenwald, M.D., testified that plaintiff suffered a compound comminuted fracture of his tibia and fibula which had protruded through his skin. Dr. Greenwald also related that the talus bone of plaintiff's ankle had been driven into his tibia. Consequently, he was forced to perform two separate operations to fuse the ankle and leg bones. The injury did not heal sufficiently enough to allow plaintiff to walk until August 1985. Dr. Greenwald opined that the injury which plaintiff suffered could have occurred only if he fell on a rigid or absolutely stiff leg, and he also stated that such rigidity could occur when one's leg slips off a ladder and then becomes wedged between its second and third step.

The Ladder

The parties stipulated that White Metal designed and manufactured the aluminum step ladder involved in the incident. The evidence established that the ladder was manufactured in April 1982, and was sold by Sears to the JCC on October 28, 1982. The aluminum ladder was five feet tall, weighed about eight pounds, had steps which were two and one-half inches wide, and had two cross braces on its back side.

The parties agree that at the time of its manufacture, the ladder in question complied with the applicable 1972 manufacturing standards of Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In 1980, however, UL and ANSI began amending their manufacturing standards by requiring all ladders to pass a new "torsion spreader arm test." On January 23, 1981, White Metal submitted two prototype ladders similar to the one involved in the accident to UL for testing, both of which failed initially. However, White Metal tendered a revised model which did pass the test. A similar process occurred with respect to tests conducted by ANSI, i.e., an initial sample aluminum ladder, submitted by Sears, failed the safety test, but a revised and more sturdy model passed. It is clear from the record, however, that compliance with these more stringent standards was not mandated until June (UL standard) and October (ANSI standard) of 1982.

The Similar Occurrence

Charles Wysocki testified for the plaintiff through an evidence deposition that in the fall of 1982, he purchased a five-foot aluminum step ladder from Sears in Tuscon, Arizona. The first time Wysocki used it in order to clean out a friend's rain gutter, he placed the ladder on solid ground and carefully opened the spreader arms. He then climbed to the third step, and after he was on the ladder for about a minute, it began to twist under him. Wysocki kicked the ladder out from under him so that he would not fall on top of it, and he tumbled to the ground. When he looked at the ladder after he had fallen, he noticed that the "rear part of the ladder was twisted out of shape."

Expert Testimony

Ronald Lobodzinski, a machine design engineer called by plaintiff as his expert witness, testified that when a person twists on a ladder, he creates a torsion force on the rear legs of the ladder. He opined to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that the buckling of the rear right leg of the ladder, which was the result of the torsion force exerted by plaintiff when he reached inside the milk crate, caused plaintiff to fall to the ground. Therefore, Lobodzinski concluded, in his opinion the ladder was unreasonably dangerous because it "was used in a normal expected manner and it failed in a dangerous manner unexpectedly." Lobodzinski also opined to a degree of scientific certainty that the two and one-half inch wide steps were a defect in the ladder because it allowed a portion of the foot to overhang and therefore cause a user to slip and fall.

Defendants responded by presenting the expert testimony of Richard Ver Halen. He stated that in his opinion, the torsion force created by plaintiff's reaching for the crate could not have caused the right hind leg to buckle. Instead, he felt that plaintiff simply lost his balance which caused him and the ladder to fall simultaneously, and the damage to the ladder--i.e., the buckled spreader arm and rear leg--was the result and not the cause of the fall. He offered two reasons for this conclusion. First, he opined that had plaintiff fallen in the manner in which he described, he would have left some marking on the boiler tank to his right. Second, he stated that even if the right hind leg had completely failed, the ladder could not have caused plaintiff's fall because the other three legs, especially the two front ones, would have borne the brunt of his weight and prohibited the ladder from collapsing. ² He also opined that the fact that the steps were only two and one-half inches wide had nothing whatsoever to do with plaintiff's fall. For these reasons, Ver Halen concluded that in his opinion, the ladder did perform as was reasonably to be expected and thus was not unreasonably dangerous.

Ronald Stillman, an engineer who conducted performance tests on ladders for Sears, also testified as an expert witness through an evidence deposition. After studying photographs of the ladder in question, he opined to a degree of scientific certainty that the damage done to the rear right leg of the ladder could have been caused only if an external force, such as a body, fell on top of it, and under no circumstances could such damage be inflicted by torsion forces resulting from someone twisting on the second step of the ladder.

The jury found for the plaintiff in the amount of $681,128.98, and after the trial court denied defendants' post-trial motions, it entered judgment in favor of the plaintiff for that amount. Defendants appeal from that judgment.

I.

It is beyond dispute that in order to establish a prima facie case...