Hoffman v. Houghton Chemical Corp.
| Decision Date | 12 March 2001 |
| Docket Number | SJC-08401 |
| Citation | 751 N.E.2d 848 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
| Parties | (Mass. 2001) REMOLINDO HOFFMAN, special administrator, <A HREF="#fr1-1" name="fn1-1">1 vs. HOUGHTON CHEMICAL CORPORATION & another <A HREF="#fr1-2" name="fn1-2">2 (and a companion case <A HREF="#fr1-3" name="fn1-3">3 ) |
County: Middlesex.
Present: Marshall, C.J., Greaney, Ireland, Spina, Cowin, Sosman, & Cordy, JJ.
Summary: Negligence, Wrongful death, Manufacturer, Toxic chemical, Duty to warn, Adequacy of warning, Bulk supplier doctrine. Warranty. Practice, Civil, Instructions to jury. Evidence, Failure to produce witness.
Civil action commenced in the Superior Court Department on October 3, 1989.
The case was tried before Maria I. Lopez, J.
The Supreme Judicial Court on its own initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court.
Richard T. Tucker for the plaintiffs.
Joseph A. Regan for Houghton Chemical Corporation.
F. Dore Hunter (Michael J. Calabro with him) for Unocal Chemicals Division, Union Oil Company of California.
The following submitted briefs for amici curiae:
Hugh F. Young, Jr., of Virginia, David R. Geiger, & Hilary J. Ames, for The Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc.
Douglas K. Sheff, John J. St. Andre, & Jodi Petrucelli for The Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys.
On March 6, 1989, an explosion and fire ripped through Gotham Ink of New England, Inc. (Gotham), an ink manufacturer in Marlborough. The blast killed two workers and severely injured several others. The plaintiffs commenced these personal injury and wrongful death actions against three manufacturers and suppliers of the chemicals allegedly involved in the conflagration: Exxon Company, U.S.A. (Exxon); Unocal Chemicals Division, Union Oil Company of California (Unocal); and Houghton Chemical Corporation (Houghton).4 After nearly six weeks of testimony at a consolidated trial on the plaintiffs' claims for negligence and breach of warranty for faulty product design and failure to warn, the jury returned special verdicts in favor of all defendants, and the complaints were dismissed. The plaintiffs filed a motion for a new trial that was denied. The plaintiffs have appealed, and we transferred the cases to this court on our own motion.5 A pivotal question in this appeal concerns the duty of a bulk supplier to warn all foreseeable users of the risks associated with a product's use. We adopt the "bulk supplier doctrine" as an affirmative defense in products liabilities actions, and affirm the judgments.
The trial record is voluminous; we summarize only the evidence on which the jury could have based their verdicts that is relevant to the issues on appeal.
The defendants manufacture and supply chemical products in bulk. Unocal supplied Gotham with acetone and methanol in fifty-five-gallon drums. Unocal and Houghton supplied Gotham with toluene, which was delivered by tanker truck and stored in Gotham's large underground storage tanks. All three chemicals, which were involved in the tragic explosion, are highly volatile, flammable solvents.
There was extensive testimony concerning the nature and extent of instructions and warnings given by the defendants to Gotham. Prior to the date of the explosion and in the course of their dealings with Gotham, both Unocal and Houghton periodically supplied Gotham with documents detailing the properties and safe handling of the chemicals. Houghton gave Gotham material safety data sheets (MSDS) for toluene that had been supplied by the manufacturer, Exxon. The MSDS warned the company, among other things, to keep toluene away from sparks and static electricity. The MSDS also contained "empty drum warnings," advising Gotham of the specific dangers relating to the reuse of empty containers.6 Houghton also provided its own empty drum warnings to Gotham.
Unocal gave Gotham MSDS for acetone and methanol that had similar warnings about product flammability, the need to avoid contact with ignition sources, and the importance of not storing the product in unreconditioned drums. Additionally, Unocal issued drum label warnings with its methanol and acetone products, and its drum labels indicated in words and pictorially that the drum contents were flammable.
The defendants had ample reason to believe that Gotham was a knowledgeable purchaser of their products, able to understand the product warnings and to pass appropriate safety warnings on to their employees. As an ink manufacturer for the industrial market, Gotham annually purchased thousands of gallons of flammable chemicals. In compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations, the company had grounding devices in its receiving and production areas designed to dissipate any static charge accumulated in the transfer of chemical solvents from one container to another.
Gotham also had an independent obligation under OSHA regulations to train employees about workplace safety. The evidence established that, although the company was not in full compliance with an OSHA-mandated hazard communication program for training and providing safety information to employees,7 Gotham periodically conducted safety meetings with its employees. Additionally, its supervisors and laboratory personnel often reminded employees of the importance of bonding and grounding when transferring solvents. For Portuguese-speaking workers, such as the plaintiffs' decedents Hoffman and Sobrinho, whose knowledge of English was limited, the warnings were given in Portuguese by a bilingual foreman and his son.
The evidence established that, prior to the explosion, Gotham had on hand a small library of books and other materials by the defendants, other suppliers, and noted authorities concerning the safe transfer of flammable solvents. In December, 1987, Gotham issued its own MSDS to its customers of "press wash," a cleaning solvent composed of equal parts of acetone, methanol, and toluene.8 The Gotham MSDS correctly advised that press wash was an OSHA 1B flammable liquid that was 100% volatile and that required special precautions in handling, including avoiding exposure to sparks and grounding all vessels when pouring from one container to another.
The jury reasonably could have found that Gotham, although aware of its obligations to provide a safe workplace and able to carry out those obligations, was lax in its safety procedures. Of relevance here, the company allowed workers to use unreconditioned drums to transfer chemical solvents and to place containers of flammable solvents on dollies with nonconductive wheels. There was no evidence that the defendants were aware that Gotham had not enforced the safety precautions as advised by Houghton and Unocal.
On the day in question, the decedent Remolindo Hoffman, who had been instructed to prepare a batch of press wash, was transferring toluene from a grounded pump in the production area to a rusty, unreconditioned drum containing residue from a previous batch of press wash. A jury reasonably could have found that Hoffman used an ungrounded dolly to place the "empty" drum on the grounded weighing scale, and that he dispensed the toluene without attaching back-up grounding clips to the drum. The ungrounded solvent transfer created a static spark that ignited vapors in and around the drum, causing the blast.
At the close of the evidence, the trial judge, over the plaintiffs' objection, instructed the jury on the so-called "bulk transfer doctrine" set out in the margin.9 To evaluate this challenged instruction for error, we must inquire whether the instruction should have been given, and, if so, whether the instruction as given was proper. To both we answer in the affirmative.
Because the plaintiffs claim that the judge instructed the jury on the "bulk transfer/sophisticated user" doctrine, we resolve first some thorny issues of terminology. There is confusion, including by the plaintiffs, between the "bulk supplier doctrine" and the "sophisticated user defense." These are separate, conceptually discrete affirmative defenses available to defendants in certain products liability actions. See Donahue v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 866 F.2d 1008, 1012 (8th Cir. 1989).10
The bulk supplier doctrine allows a manufacturer-supplier (supplier) of bulk products, in certain circumstances, to discharge its duty to warn end users of a product's hazards by reasonable reliance on an intermediary. See Forest v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., 791 F. Supp. 1460, 1463 (D. Nev. 1992); Jones v. Hittle Serv., Inc., 219 Kan. 627, 637 (1976). In contrast, the sophisticated user defense protects a supplier from liability for failure to warn when the end user knows or reasonably should know of a product's dangers. Donahue v. Phillips Petroleum Co., supra at 1012 (applying Missouri law). For the bulk supplier doctrine to apply, a product must be delivered in bulk to an intermediary vendee. The relevant inquiry turns on the intermediary's knowledge of a product's hazard and its ability to pass on appropriate warnings to end users. See, e.g., Sara Lee Corp. v. Homasote Co., 719 F. Supp. 417, 424 (D. Md. 1989). The sophisticated user defense, on the other hand, requires no intermediating relationship and need not involve bulk transactions; the relevant inquiry turns on the end user's level of sophistication. See Hall v. Ashland Oil Co., 625 F. Supp. 1515, 1520 (D. Conn. 1986).
Both doctrines seek to advance the goal of products liability law to prevent accidents. The bulk supplier doctrine applies where a warning is necessary to apprise end users of product hazards. See, e.g., Adams v. Union Carbide Corp., 737 F.2d 1453, 1457 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1062 (1984). The sophisticated user doctrine applies where a warning will have little deterrent effect. Cf. Bavuso v. Caterpillar Indus., Inc., 408 Mass. 694, 699 (1990), quoting Colter v. Barber-Greene Co., 403 Mass. 50, 59 (1988) (...
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