Lewis v. Envirotech Corp., s. 47088
| Decision Date | 22 May 1984 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 47088,47128,s. 47088 |
| Citation | 674 S.W.2d 105 |
| Parties | Larry Joe LEWIS, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. ENVIROTECH CORP., Hugh Burton, and Robert W. Haase, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
William Davis, Peter Spataro, Dana Eilers, St. Louis, for defendants-appellants.
John Musgrave, Paul Brown, Martha Rudolph, St. Louis, for plaintiff-respondent.
Respondent and cross-appellant Larry Joe Lewis (hereinafter referred to as "plaintiff") brought this action for injuries sustained when his right hand became caught in the belts and pulleys of a pump on which he was working. Plaintiff's suit alleged the machinery began turning due to the failure of a defective check valve manufactured and sold by appellant and cross-respondent, Envirotech Corporation (hereinafter "defendant"), and distributed by appellants and cross-respondents Hugh Burton and Robert Haase, who at the time were doing business as Midwestern Engineered Equipment (hereinafter also "defendants"). A jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff and against all defendants for $850,000. The trial court entered an order overruling plaintiff's motion for new trial on the issue of punitive damages; overruling defendants' motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and motion for new trial on liability; and granting defendants' motion for new trial on the issue of compensatory damages unless plaintiff agreed to remit $715,000 on or before March 28, 1983. Plaintiff did not accept the remittitur. We affirm.
Plaintiff was injured October 17, 1979 while working as a maintenance mechanic at the Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc., power plant in Marston, Missouri. Lewis and another mechanic were assigned to work on a pump in the Ash Dewatering Facility, which was built in the spring of 1978 to separate bottom ash produced from burning coal in the power plant into various sizes of "grit" for sale to sand blasting and manufacturing companies.
The ash or slag produced by burning coal in the power plant is dropped into water where it crystallizes. The slurry mixture is sluiced out to the Ash Dewatering Facility, which is located away from the main power plant building. The slurry is filtered through screens to separate out the various sizes of slag for commercial use. The remaining slurry is known as waste water and contains only very fine particles of slag. The waste water is pumped into a pit located outside of a small building known as the pump house.
In the pump house, three pumps send waste water from the pit into an overhead pipe known as the discharge header, which runs out of the pump house several hundred yards to large holding basins known as slag ponds. These three pumps sit in a straight line running north and south and are labeled A, B and C. On the day of plaintiff's accident, only B pump and C pump were on line.
Located above the pumps, between each pump and the discharge header, is a Flex Check Valve. The valves were manufactured by defendant Envirotech Corporation, Inc., through an order received and processed by defendants Burton and Haase. A Flex Check Valve is a flapper-type valve that opens when water flows in one direction and closes when water flows in the opposite direction. In the Ash Dewatering Facility, these valves were to permit water to flow upward from the pumps into the overhead discharge header and were to close against reverse flow to prevent waste water from flowing from the discharge header into the pumps when the pumps were turned off. The valves were lined with replaceable rubber liners to prevent corrosion in the cast iron body parts of the valves.
On the day of plaintiff's accident, he and another mechanic were assigned to check the belts on B pump in the pump house because the belts were squealing. When they arrived at the pump house, plaintiff sprayed the belts with belt dressing, but they began squealing again within a few minutes. Plaintiff called the control room over an intercom and asked that B pump be shut down.
After an operator shut off B pump, plaintiff looked through the belt guard at the pulleys connected to B pump and saw they had stopped. He then walked over to the side of the pump, bent over and stuck his right hand in behind the belt guard to touch the belts to check the tension. When plaintiff touched the belts, his right hand was jerked by the belts through the top pulleys, which were spinning in the reverse direction. Plaintiff's right arm was pulled in between the belt guard and the motor and became wedged.
Plaintiff's co-workers attempted to free his hand from the machinery by prying on the belt guard with a broom handle, but they stopped after plaintiff said, Finally, by loosening the bolts on the guard, plaintiff's co-workers were able to pull him free of the spinning machinery.
Plaintiff's index finger was nearly severed and was hanging by a piece of skin when he finally was released from the machinery. The skin had been rubbed off of his right long finger and ring finger and his wrist was fractured. He had sustained severe tearing and rupturing of the tendons, muscles and other soft tissues of his fingers and right forearm. A co-worker administered first aid, bandaged plaintiff's hand and applied an ice bag to keep the pain down while they waited for an ambulance to take plaintiff to a Sikeston hospital 25 miles away.
Doctors at Delta Community Hospital in Sikeston examined plaintiff and then sent him by ambulance to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. Plaintiff arrived at Barnes nearly six hours after the accident. At Barnes, Dr. Barbel Holtman, a plastic surgeon, amputated plaintiff's index finger, repaired a tendon of the ring finger by reinserting it into the bone and repaired the multiple skin lacerations on the fingers and hands. Dr. Holtman also repaired ruptures in the tendons of plaintiff's forearm.
Dr. Holtman operated again on plaintiff October 22 and amputated a remaining segment of his index finger. Dr. Holtman also took a skin graft from plaintiff's right thigh and applied it to the forearm wound.
Plaintiff was discharged from Barnes November 2, 1979 after spending 17 days in the hospital. Plaintiff then received physical therapy at Barnes Hospital and Delta Community Hospital for six months after his discharge from the hospital. Plaintiff made eight visits to Dr. Holtman in the eighteen months after his accident. Dr. Holtman testified she did not expect plaintiff to recover any additional function of his right arm and hand.
Dr. Jerome F. Levy examined plaintiff April 30, 1981 to evaluate his physical condition. Dr. Levy testified plaintiff would not be able to recover any of the loss of movement in his wrist and fingers. Dr. Levy concluded plaintiff had sustained a permanent, partial loss of 70 percent of the use of his right arm from the elbow down as a result of his injuries.
Plaintiff testified at trial he has less than normal strength in his injured hand, has no grip and cannot make a fist. His hand remains very sensitive to heat and cold. Plaintiff's medical expenses totalled $7,700.
Lewis missed 120 days of work because of the accident. He also missed between 160 and 200 hours of mandatory overtime work, which would have been compensated at a rate one and-one-half times his pay rate of $9.80 per hour. Plaintiff has a high school diploma and has worked all of his life at jobs requiring manual dexterity. At the time of trial, he still was working for Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc., and had been promoted to a supervisory position with the company.
The day after plaintiff was injured, three mechanics were assigned to work on the pump at the Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc., plant. They took B pump apart and found it full of slag. They also found a piece of rubber wrapped around the impeller, which they later determined to be part of the rubber liner from the Flex Check Valve located above B pump. They took the Flex Check Valve apart and found the flapper disk torn away from its hinges and wedged inside of the check valve. They also found slurry behind the rubber liner of the valve, which produced bulges inside the check valve and prevented the flapper from closing.
Donald Gibson, an associate professor of engineering at the University of Missouri-Columbia, made an investigation of the Ash Dewatering Facility. He testified at trial that in his opinion, plaintiff's injury was caused by a failure of the Flex Check Valve above B pump to close against back pressure when B pump was shut off. He said the failure permitted slurry to flow from the discharge header back through the check valve and into the pump, causing the belts and pulleys to spin backwards when they should have been out of operation.
Gibson testified the valve failed because the gasket at the outlet flange of the check valve was inadequate in design and permitted slurry to leak behind the valve's liner of the check valve and settle into pockets behind the liner near the flapper, producing bulges in the liner. The bulges interfered with the movement of the flapper and prevented it from closing against back pressure as intended. Gibson testified that in his opinion the Flex Check Valve is inadequately designed.
The Ash Dewatering System was designed by Burns & McDonnell Engineering Company. Michael McComas, the engineer who designed the Ash Dewatering System and selected the component parts, testified he choose the Flex Check Valve for use in the system based in part on representations in an advertising brochure published and distributed by Envirotech.
Donald Ashe, president of Envirotech's Allen-Sherman-Hoff Division, testified Envirotech never had tested Flex Check Valves under simulated operating conditions at a hydraulic testing facility. Ashe testified the...
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