Goodwin v. MTD Products Inc.

• Decision Date: 14 November 2000
• Docket Number: No. 00-1459,00-1459
• Citation: 232 F.3d 600
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2000) KENNETH H. GOODWIN, JR. and JACQUELINE GOODWIN, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. MTD PRODUCTS, INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellant
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 600

232 F.3d 600 (7th Cir. 2000)

KENNETH H. GOODWIN, JR. and JACQUELINE GOODWIN, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. MTD PRODUCTS, INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 00-1459

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued September 12, 2000

Decided November 14, 2000

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin No. 99 C 220--John C. Shabaz, Chief Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before POSNER, COFFEY, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

COFFEY, Circuit Judge.

On June 6, 1998, Kenneth Goodwin suffered an injury to his left eye after being struck by a plastic wing nut discharged from the lawn mower he was using. Based on his injuries, Goodwin filed a product liability suit against MTD Products (the manufacturer of the lawnmower), claiming that: 1) MTD negligently manufactured the mower; 2) the mower left MTD's "possession and control" in a defective condition; 3) the mower was unreasonably dangerous; and 4) MTD breached expressed and implied warranties relating to the mower. After trial, the jury awarded Goodwin $603,167.96 plus costs, and the judge denied MTD's motions for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

In late April 1998, Goodwin purchased an MTD lawn mower from Wal-Mart and transported it to his home. According to Goodwin's testimony, he took it out of the truck and laid it by the front, by the front porch and [he] opened the box and took the lawn mower out and the directions and [he] just kind of flipped through the directions and glanced at a few things and . . . then he flipped the handle up and tightened the wing nuts on the handle and put some oil and some gasoline in it and started mowing [his] lawn.

After having used the mower on three or four prior occasions, Goodwin took the mower from his garage on June 6, 1998, at approximately 10:00 in the morning. After mowing for about 20 minutes, and while walking directly behind the mower and approximately five feet from his house, Goodwin "felt something hit [him] in the [left] eye and [he] just let go of the lawn mower and [ ] put [his] hand up to [his] face and . . . [he] could tell that [he] was bleeding."¹ Goodwin's wife immediately drove him to the emergency room at Vernon County Hospital in Vernon, Wisconsin, and he was transferred to Gunderson Lutheran Hospital in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the next day for eye surgery.

A few days after his surgery, Goodwin, while searching his yard in an attempt to discover what possibly could have hit him in the eye, discovered a plastic wing nut in approximately the same area of the yard where his injury occurred. Subsequently, Goodwin filed suit alleging that the lawn mower was dangerous and defective in that the plastic wing nut became loose and fell into the mower's blade due to the vibrations caused by the lawn mower's motor. According to Goodwin's theory, the wing nut was then propelled out the side chute (facing down) at a high rate of speed (approximately 190 miles per hour), hit the ground, bounced off the ground, hit the house approximately five feet away, and ricocheted into his left eye. On the other hand, MTD claimed that the lawn mower was properly designed and safe, and that it would have been impossible for the plaintiffs' "ricochet" theory to have occurred.

However, Goodwin gave the only eye- witness testimony regarding the accident and subsequent injury to his left eye. Furthermore, Goodwin introduced the deposition of the doctor who performed his eye surgery as well as expert testimony as to the manufacture, design, and condition of the lawn mower. MTD attempted to counter Goodwin's theory with expert testimony of its own concerning the manufacture, design, and operation of the MTD lawn mower.

A. The Plaintiffs' Experts

1. Dr. Christopher Born

As the trial judge informed the jury, "Dr. Christopher Born is a medical doctor certified in ophthalmology, having practiced for 20 years at the Gunderson Lutheran Medical Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He specialized in eye surgery with a subspeciality in the cornea and the front part of the eye."

According to Dr. Born's deposition testimony introduced at trial

I saw Kenneth Goodwin on the 7th of June, 1998 in the emergency room at Gunderson Lutheran Hospital with an injury to his left eye. He had a laceration on the left lower lid. He had a very unusual laceration to the left cornea.

The cornea is the front window of the eye and most lacerations of the cornea caused by flying objects are more a direct penetration to the cornea. This one [Goodwin's eye injury] started at one side of the cornea and sliced and shelved completely across the cornea ending up just before it entered the eye. The reason that type of injury is unusual is because normal objects are either sharp enough to penetrate directly into the eye or large enough that they cause a concussive injury to the eye. This one [the injury to Goodwin's eye] was obviously caused by an object that was large enough to carry significant momentum and yet wasn't particularly sharp.

It is my opinion that the broken wing nut [in this case] is a type of projectile consistent with the injury to Mr. Goodwin's cornea. It satisfies that criteria, being large enough to cause a significant blow to the eye and relatively sharp being cut by the lawn mower to cause the slice and injury to the eye.

After plaintiffs' attorney finished with the narrative reading of Dr. Born's deposition testimony, the defendantelected not to offer a responsive narrative nor did MTD offer any expert medical opinion of its own. Thereafter, the plaintiffs called their engineering expert, Donald Marty.

2. Donald Marty

As the district court informed the jury,²

Donald Marty is a licensed professional engineer with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He has been employed by Safety Engineering Associates in Madison since 1988 and holds various memberships and certifications. He has lectured and attended many continuing education courses.

Before reaching any opinion, Marty: 1) inspected the "subject rope guide and wing nut from the accident lawn mower"; 2) compared the rope guide and wing nut design used by MTD with other lawn mower designs; 3) reviewed the operator's manual; 4) reviewed the safety standards published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for lawn mowers; 5) reviewed the sales literature from MTD and Wal-Mart; and 6) reviewed the depositions of the Goodwin's, Dr. Born, and MTD's expert, Gunter Plamper. Based on his review of the evidence and testing he performed to determine the residual torque of different types of wing nuts as fastening devices for different rope guides, Marty concluded that MTD's use of a plastic wing nut in the assembly of the lawn mower's rope guide was unreasonably dangerous.

Question: Do you have an opinion to a reasonable degree of engineering certainty as to whether or not the lawn mower, specifically the plastic wing nut in question, was defective and unreasonably dangerous as sent by the manufacturer [MTD] and purchased by the consumer [Goodwin]?

Answer: Yes. In my opinion it is defective and unreasonably dangerous.

Questions: Why is that?

Answer: Because the plastic wing nut does not have a locking feature and it can easily unthread if it should loosen.

Question: Is it feasible using the exact design of this mower to use a lock nut with a plastic or nylon insert?

Answer: Yes it is. . . . That would be the lock nut and rope guide that I talked about earlier from the Weed Eater lawn mower. That design has two features. One, it has a shoulder formed onto the rope guide so it can be tightly clamped to the handle.

In addition it has the steel lock nut with a nylon insert which one can tightly clamp the rope guide to the handle of the lawn mower and also it has the locking feature that we've been talking about. If the nut should be loose for whatever reason, it will not unthread as long as the nylon locking feature is engaging the threads. In my opinion that's a much safer design.

Additionally, Marty testified that the plastic wing nut turned "very, very easily" and demonstrated this by turning the plastic wing nut with his finger.

On cross-examination, Marty made it clear that his testimony was focused toward the defective nature of the plastic wing nut used on the MTD lawn mower and stated, "I have not reviewed or analyzed other parts of the lawn mower. They may or may not be defective, but I do not have opinions." Furthermore, Marty admitted that the lawn mower complied with ANSI standards. Additionally, Marty consistently maintained, throughout both direct and cross-examination, that the use of a plastic wing nut was "defective and unreasonably dangerous" because "the plastic wing nut does not have a locking feature and it can easily unthread if it should loosen" due to the vibrations of the mower's motor, and that lawn mowers should be equipped with steel lock nuts with nylon threads because it is "a much safer design."

B. The Defendant's Expert Gunter Plamper

After MTD's motion for a directed verdict was denied, the defense called Gunter Plamper, an engineer, as its rebuttal expert. Plamper is a registered professional engineer in Germany and worked as an engineer in Nuremberg, Germany, for Siemans Company before coming to the United States in 1964. Plamper was initially hired by MTD in 1964 as a project engineer and given the task of designing a high-end self- propelled walk-behind lawn mower. In 1970, he was promoted to chief engineer of consumer products, and remained in that position until 1994. Currently, he is MTD's vice president in charge of product development and safety. Furthermore, Plamper holds eight patents which have been incorporated into mass- produced products. Additionally, he is involved with ANSI and is a member of the Engineering...