Fontenot v. F. Hollier & Sons
| Decision Date | 27 November 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 85-288,85-288 |
| Citation | 478 So.2d 1379 |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US |
| Parties | Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 10,908 Larry FONTENOT, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. F. HOLLIER & SONS, et al., Defendants-Appellants. |
Edwards, Stefanski & Barousse, James M. Cunningham, III, Crowley, Davidson, Meaux, Sonnier & McElligott, Richard Meaux, Lafayette, for defendants-appellants.
John Haas Weinstein, Opelousas, for plaintiff-appellee.
Before DOMENGEAUX, DOUCET and KING, JJ.
This appeal presents the issue of whether a grain drill manufactured by defendant, John Deere Company and Deere & Company, and sold by defendant, F. Hollier & Sons, Incorporated, to plaintiff, Larry Fontenot, is defective.
After trial, the jury found the grain drill defective and awarded judgment in favor of the plaintiff and against defendants for damages and attorney's fees. The defendants timely appeal. We affirm.
Larry Fontenot (hereinafter Fontenot) purchased a John Deere 8300 grain drill with a Tru-Vee attachment, manufactured by John Deere Company and Deere & Company (hereinafter Deere), from F. Hollier & Sons, Incorporated (hereinafter Hollier), a Deere franchised dealer, so that he could plant soybean crops for himself and Arlen Lafleur (hereinafter Lafleur). Neither Fontenot's nor Lafleur's crop succeeded as expected and Fontenot filed suit against Deere and Hollier, alleging that the grain drill was defective and that the defect caused his low crop yield and resultant damages.
Lafleur also filed a separate suit against John Deere Company and Deere & Company to recover his damages allegedly caused by the defective grain drill. Fontenot's case was consolidated for trial with that suit, entitled Arlen Lafleur v. John Deere Company, et al., and bearing Number 83,620 on the trial court docket. Judgment was rendered in favor of Lafleur and against Deere in that suit and Deere appealed. These suits remain consolidated on appeal and, since the law and relevant facts are common to both, our opinion here is equally applicable. However, we render a separate judgment in the consolidated case of Arlen Lafleur v. John Deere Company, et al., 478 So.2d 1390 (La.App. 3rd Cir.1985).
A jury decided Fontenot's case and the trial judge decided Lafleur's case at the time of the trial. Both the judge and the jury found that the John Deere 8300 grain drill with a Tru-Vee attachment was defective and that the defect caused Fontenot's and Lafleur's crop loss and damages. After considering the testimony and other evidence produced at trial the jury awarded Fontenot the following items of damages:
Return of purchase price $ 6,178.00
Expenses incurred 15,678.75
Crop loss 60,820.00
Mental anguish 125,000.00
Attorney's fees 69,225.00
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Total $276,901.75
The trial judge awarded Lafleur the following sums as damages:
Crop loss $ 55,388.03
Mental anguish
aggravation, stress and
inconvience 10,000.00
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Total $ 65,388.03
In Fontenot's suit, Deere and Hollier filed Motions for Judgment Notwithstanding The Verdict and/or New Trial or Alternatively For Remittitur from the judgment awarded Fontenot. The trial court denied their motions.
Deere and Hollier then appealed these consolidated cases asserting numerous specifications of error which can be broadly stated as follows:
The triers of fact erred in (1) holding that the grain drill was defective and the sole proximate cause of Fontenot's and Lafleur's damages; and the trial court erred in (2) refusing to invoke the express warranty provisions of the sale; (3) failing to reduce the jury's award of $125,000.00 in damages for mental anguish suffered by Fontenot; (4) awarding damages for economic loss to Lafleur; (5) admitting evidence of subsequent remedial measures and a video tape demonstrating the grain drill's operation; (6) refusing to allow defendants to introduce evidence on the issue of "credit for use;" and (7) failing to reduce the jury's award to Fontenot of $69,225.00 in attorney's fees.
For fifteen years prior to 1980, Fontenot worked as a laborer on Lafleur's farm. In 1980, Fontenot decided to start his own farm business on a 432 acre tract of land in Evangeline Parish and St. Landry Parish. In order to complete his 1980 soybean crop, Fontenot used $4,000.00 of his own money together with $71,000.00 that he borrowed from the F.H.A. and $6,000.00 that he borrowed from Lafleur. At that time Fontenot also entered into an agreement with Lafleur by which he agreed to plant and harvest Lafleur's 402 acres of soybeans in exchange for the use of Lafleur's farming equipment and bookkeeping system.
To facilitate the planting of both crops, Fontenot purchased a John Deere 8300 grain drill with a Tru-Vee attachment, manufactured by Deere, from Hollier on April 8, 1980 for a purchase price of $6,178.00.
One of the main selling features of the John Deere 8300 grain drill was that it is designed to accurately plant seeds at any depth selected by the farmer. The operation of the grain drill may be briefly explained as follows: The grain drill has a drill path with 16 runners which each plants one row of seeds. On each runner there is a disc blade which cuts into the soil to a pre-set depth and the seeds are dropped into the resulting trench. The depth of the trench is governed by a gauge wheel on each runner which controls the depth to which the disc blade cuts. The pressure of the disc cutting into the soil forces the gauge wheel on each runner all the way up to a stop at a pre-set position. As long as each gauge wheel reaches the pre-set stop position, the seeds will be planted accurately at the pre-set depth chosen by the farmer. However, if the force of the disc cutting into the soil does not force the gauge wheel up to the pre-set stop position, the disc blade will not cut deeply enough into the soil resulting in the seeds being planted shallower than the pre-set depth. Once the seeds have been dropped into the trench made by the disc blade, a "packing wheel" spreads dirt over the seeds so that they are adequately covered.
On May 22, 1980, Fontenot started planting the soybean seeds with the John Deere grain drill set at a depth of 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 inches, which is the customary depth for planting soybeans. After planting only 40 or 60 yards, he stopped so that he and Lafleur could check every runner. The grain drill was planting at the proper depth so he proceeded with the planting. Lafleur then decided to ride on the tractor with Fontenot so that he could watch the drill plant while Fontenot was driving. They planted another 40 or 50 yards and stopped again to check the drill and found that all the runners were planting properly. They then planted another round and a half of the field, and they again stopped and checked the grain drill's seed placement. Fontenot and Lafleur thought the grain drill was working properly so Fontenot resumed planting. He planted 10 or 12 acres before he stopped to check the grain drill again. He checked several of the runners at this time and everything appeared fine. Since the grain drill seemed to be working properly, Fontenot thought it was only necessary to check it every 10 to 20 acres which he did and it appeared to be working properly.
Fontenot had planted approximately 220 acres when he became ill on June 1, 1980 and was forced to stop planting. As a result, Lafleur began planting the remaining 614 acres on June 4, 1980. Lafleur testified that he randomly checked several runners every 80 to 100 acres and the grain drill seemed to be working properly. Before Lafleur finished planting the remaining acreage, Fontenot recovered from his illness. To insure that they would finish all of the planting within the prime time planting period, Fontenot and Lafleur borrowed an International Harvester planter from a friend and used both planters to complete their planting. On June 10, 1980, they finished planting the entire crop on all of their acreage.
Sometime during the second week of June, Lafleur was cleaning the grain drill when he noticed that some of the gauge wheels which govern the planting depth were hard to move up and down. He found that the gauge wheels on only 2 or 3 runners in the drill path of 16 runners moved up easily. He thought they should move more freely on the rest of the runners so he checked the fields and found seeds lying only 1/2 inch deep in the fields planted with the John Deere grain drill. Lafleur showed this to Fontenot and they called a salesman at Hollier's, Ralph Miller.
Miller inspected the fields and told them to wait a few days because if it rained their crop would come up anyway. One week and a half later it did rain, however, most of the crop still did not come up. At Hollier's request, Deere's factory representative, Steve Hines, made a trip to Fontenot's farm to inspect the John Deere grain drill. He torqued the castellated nuts on the John Deere grain drill that govern the movement of the gauge wheels to 120 pounds and the gauge wheels would not move as freely as he wanted. Miller told Hines that one of Hollier's employees could adjust the grain drill to make it work correctly. The next day Miller sent Hollier's assembly man, Herb Hazelton, to adjust the John Deere grain drill. Hazelton loosened the castellated nuts, which were torqued at 120 pounds in accordance with the owner's manual, on each of the runners until he could move each gauge wheel freely by hand.
In the meantime the soybean crop was not growing as one would normally expect. Photographs introduced into evidence showed some rows were growing at an acceptable rate while other rows directly adjacent to the healthy rows were barely growing, if at all. The F.H.A. county supervisor, Russell Gibson, examined the field sometime...
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