Matlock v. Midwest Waste Indus., Inc.

• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: SMITH
• Citation: Matlock v. Midwest Waste Indus., Inc., 889 S.W.2d 56 (Mo. App. 1994)
• Decision Date: 11 October 1994
• Docket Number: No. 64781,64781
• Parties: Donald MATLOCK & Shirley Matlock, Plaintiffs/Appellants, v. MIDWEST WASTE INDUSTRIAL, INC., et al., Defendants/Respondents.

Page 56

889 S.W.2d 56

Donald MATLOCK & Shirley Matlock, Plaintiffs/Appellants, v. MIDWEST WASTE INDUSTRIAL, INC., et al., Defendants/Respondents.

No. 64781.

Missouri Court of Appeals,

Eastern District,

Division Two.

Oct. 11, 1994.

Motion for Rehearing and/or Transfer to

Supreme Court Denied Nov. 30, 1994.

Application to Transfer Denied

Jan. 24, 1995.

Donald S. Singer, Kenneth E. Dick, Edwards, Singer, Wolk & Spoeneman, St. Louis, for appellants.

Theodore J. MacDonald, Jr., Donald J. Ohl, Burroughs, Helper, Broom, MacDonald & Hebrank, Edwardsville, IL, K. Steven Jones, Evans & Dixon, St. Louis, for respondents.

SMITH, Presiding Judge.

Plaintiffs appeal from a judgment based upon a jury verdict in this action for injuries sustained by Donald Matlock ¹ during an encounter with a trash compactor at his place of employment in January 1986. We affirm.

Plaintiff was employed by General Motors as a trash hauler at its Union Avenue plant in St. Louis. His job consisted of collecting loaded rolling trash gondolas from around the facility, towing them to trash compactors, and attaching the lifting arm of the compactor to the gondola so the gondola could be hydraulically lifted up and emptied into the compactor. Plaintiff was injured on the first day of operation of new compactors provided and maintained by defendant Midwest Waste Industrial, Inc. and designed and installed by Eco Systems, Inc.

The replaced compactors required the operator to maintain continuous pressure on a switch for the compactor to continue the lifting operation. The new system provided three buttons, up, down and off, and did not require continuous pressure on the up or down button for the lifting operation to continue. Plaintiff connected a gondola to the lifting arm and activated the up button. He then saw a garbage bag draped over the side of the gondola and without stopping the machinery attempted to push the bag into the gondola. In doing so he was trapped between the lifting arm and the trash bin wall. He sustained scraping injuries to his neck and face and broken facial bones.

Plaintiff contended that the feature of the machinery which allowed the lifting arm to continue operating without affirmative pressure by the operator rendered the compactor defective. Much of the dispute at trial centered around whether General Motors had requested the compactor function without affirmative pressure by the operator.

Plaintiff contends that the trial court committed reversible error in failing to sustain plaintiff's objection to a portion of defendant Eco's argument which plaintiff asserts was a misstatement of the law. During the course of the argument counsel for defendant Eco stated:

There's one other aspect of the claim on the product defect, and that is, even if it was defective, if Mr. Matlock knew at the time he was involved in this incident, if he knew of the possibility of being hurt, he appreciated the danger of being hurt, yet he went ahead and exposed himself to that danger, then you also must put on this Part 1 [referring to the verdict form], if you believe Donald Matlock was partly at fault in that regard, you have to put on Part 1, Ecosystems' name.

If Donald Matlock was partly at fault on the product claim, you have to put his name--put Ecosystems' name up there. You cannot find in favor of Donald Matlock if he was partly at fault on the product claim. And I think the evidence, as Mr. MacDonald said, is crystal clear that he was partly at fault. He knew that there was a danger.

MR. SINGER: Your Honor, I'm going to object to that. I think that's a misstatement of the law to the jury, that they can't find on the product liability if he's partly at fault. That's a misstatement of the law. I object to it.

THE COURT: Let me see the instruction.

MR. JONES: It's a contributory to the instruction.

THE COURT: The objection is overruled. The jury will be guided by the instructions as given.

MR. JONES: And the question boils down to, did he know that he could get hurt if he exposed himself to this moving machinery? You bet he did. The question is, that Mr. MacDonald asked him, and a different question that was not read to you earlier said, "You knew, did you not, that you had to get your arm and body out of that area quickly as you could because of the lifting arm would be coming up, true?"

"I knew I had to get in and out before I would get hung."

No doubt about it, that he knew that by sticking his head, arm or whatever he did put in there, that he knew there was a possibility of getting caught.

In denying the motion for new trial the trial court addressed the issue of its overruling plaintiff's objection to the argument. The court stated in its memorandum:

The Court is persuaded that it was error to overrule the objection to the argument of Eco's counsel. This is so because there were two claims submitted to the jury: a negligence claim, which necessitated apportionment of fault, and a pre-1987 products liability claim, to which contributory fault is a defense. The defense of contributory fault is more than mere contributory negligence, but...