Hatch v. Trail King Indus. Inc.
| Decision Date | 29 August 2011 |
| Docket Number | No. 10–2153.,10–2153. |
| Citation | 656 F.3d 59 |
| Parties | Dean F. HATCH and Mary L. Hatch, Plaintiffs, Appellants,v.TRAIL KING INDUSTRIES, INC., Defendant, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
J. Michael Conley, with whom Kenney & Conley, P.C. was on brief, for appellant.Timothy C. Kelleher III and Cooley Manion Jones LLP on brief for the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys, amicus curiae.Myles W. McDonough, with whom Lawrence J. Kenney, Jr., Christopher M. Reilly, and Sloane and Walsh, LLP were on brief, for appellee.Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, TORRUELLA and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.LYNCH, Chief Judge.
A jury rejected both the negligence and the breach of the implied warranty of merchantability claims brought by the plaintiffs, Dean Hatch and his wife, after Hatch was severely injured at work and left paralyzed from his chest down. Hatch did not bring this suit against his employer, Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc. (“ADS”); it may be he was restricted to an exclusive workers' compensation remedy. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 152, §§ 23–24; Roberts v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 599 F.3d 73, 77 (1st Cir.2010).
Rather, he brought suit against Trail King Industries, Inc., the company that had built a specialized trailer for Hatch's employer, following the employer's specifications as to the parts of the trailer which were said to have caused the injuries. The suit was filed in October 2007 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The plaintiffs asserted that the design of the hydraulically operated drop gate of the trailer was defective and that the addition of an inexpensive fixed safety chain or an extended spring-loaded pin would have prevented the accident. The district court denied cross-motions for summary judgment and the case went to trial. The Hatches appeal both from the jury instructions on negligence and the implied warranty and from denial of the plaintiffs' motion in limine.1
The district court instructed the jury that a defendant fabricator in the circumstances of this case may have duties under the laws of negligence and implied warranty to injured third parties but that such duties were subject to exceptions, which the court then defined. The jury later asked a question on the implied warranty exception and the court's answer provided an additional gloss. In essence, the court instructed under the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 404 that a defendant who manufactures a product according to the buyer's specifications could not be liable under either a negligence or implied warranty theory unless the design defect was so obvious it would not have been reasonable for the defendant to manufacture according to the design.
On appeal, the plaintiffs argue that these instructions and the answer to the jury's question were in error under Massachusetts law, that the errors infected both the negligence and implied warranty findings by the jury, that the denial of the motion in limine was error, and that they must be given a new trial. Trail King, the fabricator, argues that the instructions were entirely correct, as was the denial of the motion in limine, and that the jury had a number of alternative reasons to reject the plaintiffs' case, so any error is harmless.
We affirm.
Trail King is located in South Dakota. Some sixty to seventy percent of the trailers it sells are custom-made, built largely to the specifications of its customers. While Trail King was responsible for the design of the motor vehicle component of the trailer at issue, ADS was responsible for designing and providing Trail King with the specifications for the gates. ADS is the world's “largest manufacturer of corrugated polyethylene pipe” for drainage systems, with thirty-two North American manufacturing facilities and twenty distribution centers. In the 1980s, the ADS Material Handling Committee put together a design for a “hydraulic trailer” that would handle the heavy weight associated with the unloading of ADS's highly successful N–12 plastic pipe product. ADS determined that “[a]n outside flatbed manufacturer [would] build the N–12 trailers using the Material Handling Committee's trailer design.” ADS contacted the two largest manufacturers of flatbed trucks, Dakota and Trail King, and awarded the contract to Trail King through competitive bidding. Trail King manufactured approximately 350 N–12 trailers using the designs provided by ADS. ADS was the exclusive user of these trailers.2 Trailer No. 25019, the trailer at issue in this case, was delivered to ADS in April 1994 and assigned to ADS's Ludlow, Massachusetts plant.3
The N–12 trailers are forty-eight feet long with two separate twenty-foot long compartments. Each compartment has ten-foot high sides and a hydraulic gate on the passenger side of the trailer. These hydraulic gates are hinged at the bottom of the trailer and held upright by two hydraulic cylinders attached to a gate upright above the hinge. In addition, each of the gate uprights has a hole that aligns with a corresponding hole on the trailer frame, through which a 3/4? diameter pin is inserted and secured with a cotter pin to ensure that the gate stays in the upright position. The locations of the pin and hole were mandated by ADS.
ADS employees load the pipes through the front and rear of the trailer while the side gate remains in an upright position. Once loaded, ADS employees secure the load with tie-down straps for each compartment, with strap ratchets on the driver's side of the trailer. ADS mandates “driver's side strapping” to prevent the driver from releasing the straps on the passenger's side while standing in the pathway of the gate. Under ADS safety procedures for unloading the trailer, drivers remove the pins, release the straps from the driver's side, and then stand aside while operating the gate's hydraulics with a remote electrical switch. As the gate lowers, the pipes roll out.
On February 1, 2007, Hatch was assigned trailer No. 25019 to deliver two loads of pipe (one in each compartment) to a customer in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Hatch was unaware, however, that air had been introduced into the gate's hydraulic system a few days earlier by another driver who had not properly reported the problem. Upon arriving at the customer drop-off location, Hatch removed the pins for both gates, loosened the vertical straps for both gates, and brought both gates to 90 degrees while he waited for the customer to clear a space for unloading. Once the space was cleared, Hatch released each of the two straps on the front load, intending to walk to the back of the trailer and lower the front gate to the ground using the remote hydraulic switch. However, as soon as Hatch released the second strap, the gate fell. Hatch was caught beneath the gate and suffered injuries resulting in paraplegia.
The action was tried to a jury in a one-week trial. There was no objection to the form of the two key questions put to the jury on the verdict form:
Q.1. Was Trail King negligent in designing the N–12 trailer that Dean Hatch was unloading on February 1, 2007 when the accident occurred?
....
Q.3. Did Trail King breach the implied warranty of merchantability in selling, as designed in 1994, the N–12 trailer that Dean Hatch was unloading on February 1, 2007, when the accident occurred?
The jury was instructed that it would first decide “whether Trail King was all or in part responsible for the design of the N–12 [trailer].” The court told the jury:
If you decide it was not, and was instead a mere fabricator of a trailer designed to ADS's specifications and no more, then it cannot be held liable on a theory of defective design unless the defect in the specifications was so obvious that a reasonable fabricator would have rejected the dictated design.
The instruction continued: “If you find, on the other hand, that Trail King designed the N–12 trailer, as it was sold in 1994, either on its own or in substantial collaboration with ADS, you must then consider the law that governs a manufacturer's liability for a design defect.” This largely tracked an instruction proposed by the defendant, which cited to the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 404. Plaintiffs objected to the “fabrication” instruction.
After explaining the difference between negligence and implied warranty, the court then instructed on a manufacturer's duty “[i]n designing a product,” setting forth the factors of gravity of any risk, likelihood of accident, feasibility of safer design, financial cost of feasible alternative design, and any adverse consequences of design change on the usefulness of the product. There was no objection to this portion of the charge.
As to the claim of breach of the implied warranty of merchantability, the court instructed:
The Hatches also claim that Trail King breached what the law terms the “implied warranty of merchantability.” Under the law of implied warranty, a manufacturer who designs and sells a product is held to a guarantee that its product is fit for the ordinary purposes for which the product is intended, including those uses and misuses which are reasonably foreseeable to one engaged in the business of producing and selling that particular kind of product.
Whether a manufacturer intends to make such a guarantee or not is irrelevant. By law, every sale of a product includes such an implied guarantee. Liability under a theory of breach of warranty focuses on whether the product was defective and unreasonably dangerous, and not on the conduct of the user or the seller. The guarantee is present even where the manufacturer has taken reasonable steps to make its product safe. Thus, a manufacturer may be held liable for the harm caused by a dangerous product without any finding of negligence on its part.
There was no objection to that portion of the charge.
Plaintiffs did object to the next portion of the charge, as emphasized below:
The reverse, however, is not true....
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...Instructions We review de novo a claim that a jury instruction was based upon an erroneous statement of the law. Hatch v. Trail King Indus., Inc., 656 F.3d 59, 64 (1st Cir.2011). “We review for abuse of discretion ‘whether the instructions adequately explained the law or whether they tended......
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Baker v. Goldman, Sachs & Co.
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