Minter v. Prime Equipment Co.

Decision Date29 June 2006
Docket NumberNo. 04-7011.,04-7011.
Citation451 F.3d 1196
PartiesTerry MINTER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PRIME EQUIPMENT COMPANY, a Texas corporation, Defendant-Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

John H. Tucker (Colin H. Tucker and Bradley S. Shelts with him on the briefs) of Rhodes, Hieronymus, Jones, Tucker & Gable, Tulsa, OK, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

James W. Connor, Jr. (Rachel C. Mathis and Thomas D. Hird with him on the brief) of Richards & Connor, Tulsa, OK, for Defendant-Appellee.

Before LUCERO, McKAY, and McCONNELL, Circuit Judges.

McCONNELL, Circuit Judge.

Terry Minter, the plaintiff-appellant, is a professional painter who was severely injured after falling from an elevated work platform. He filed a personal injury lawsuit against the manufacturer and distributor of the work platform. Although his complaint centered on design and manufacturing defect claims, a series of procedural maneuvers before trial left him with only a failure to warn claim against the distributor. The jury found for the defendant on the failure to warn claim. Mr. Minter appeals that judgment, as well as the district court's ruling that left him with only one claim. We must decide whether the district court abused its discretion by dismissing the plaintiff's product liability claim against the distributor for untimeliness and lack of notice and by not allowing an amendment to the complaint; whether the district court wrongfully excluded from trial the evidence of the distributor's subsequent remedial measures; and whether the district court improperly allowed evidence of comparative negligence into a strict liability failure to warn case.

We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand for new proceedings in accordance with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

Terry Minter was hired to work as a painter at a construction site in Tulsa, Oklahoma. On the morning of July 14, 1996, he was using a "scissor lift"—a type of industrial lift that raises and lowers a platform used for work positioning—to enable him to paint the underside of a roof at the site. While working from atop the scissor lift, Mr. Minter accidentally stepped off the side of the lift platform and fell twenty feet to the ground. The impact fractured his skull, damaged his spinal cord, and resulted in permanent paralysis from the waist down.

Mr. Minter maintains that his accident was caused by a defect in the scissor lift. At the time of the incident, he was using a 1987 "Barecat" model scissor lift manufactured by Economy Company ("Economy"), a foreign corporation. The Barecat lift was designed to have a solid metal guardrail around the entire perimeter of the lift platform. On the lift Mr. Minter was using, one of the sides had a chainlink closure instead of a solid guardrail. Mr. Minter failed to properly latch the chainlink closure on the morning of the accident,1 which allowed him to step unintentionally off the platform and fall to the ground. The gravamen of the lawsuit is that the solid guardrail is a necessary part of the Barecat scissor lift's fall protection system because it is welded in place and cannot be mistakenly left open by the user. Mr. Minter argues that if there had been a solid guardrail at the lift's entrance instead of the chainlink closure, his accident would not have happened.

The State Court Proceedings

On April 2, 1997, Mr. Minter filed a personal injury suit in the Tulsa County District Court in Oklahoma. Case No. CJ-97-01615. His complaint asserted products liability and negligence claims against the manufacturer, Economy, for failure to use reasonable care in designing, manufacturing, inspecting, and testing the scissors lift, and for failure to warn of defects in the lift. It also asserted strict liability and negligence claims against Appellee Prime Equipment Company ("Prime Equipment"), a Texas-based corporation that leases, sells, and services Economy machinery. The pleadings named four other defendants as well: G & G Leasing, the owner of the lift; Marrs Electric, Inc., the party leasing the lift at the time of the accident; Manhattan Construction, Inc., the general contractor on the site; Sundial Painting, Inc., Mr. Minter's employer; and Silverado Foods, Inc., the owner of the building where Mr. Minter was working.

At the time he filed the lawsuit, the plaintiff believed that Prime Equipment's role in the accident was limited to its maintenance and repair work on the lift. He therefore based his claim against Prime Equipment on the company's alleged failure to properly "inspect, repair, and maintain the scissors lift" when it was brought in for an annual safety inspection, in addition to its alleged failure to warn. Appellant's App. 158. During discovery, however, the plaintiff learned that Prime Equipment had owned the scissor lift between 1987, the year the lift was manufactured, and August 1991, when Prime Equipment sold the lift to G & G Leasing. Prime Equipment was therefore in the chain of distribution for purposes of the manufacturer product liability claim against Economy.

On July 8, 1998, Mr. Minter amended his complaint to include a retailer product liability claim against Prime Equipment. Prime Equipment disclaimed any responsibility for removing the solid guardrail, and one of its employees testified that Prime Equipment bought the lift from Economy with the chainlink entry already installed. The plaintiff responded that, under Oklahoma law, Prime Equipment was "liable under the theory of manufacturer's product liability" because "[t]he liability of the manufacturer and distributor/retailer is coextensive, even though the latter may not be responsible for the existence or presence of a defect." Appellant's App. 194.

Prime Equipment defended itself against both the retailer product liability claim and the negligence claim. It responded to the product liability claim by challenging the qualifications and testimony of the only expert witness to testify on behalf of Mr. Minter that the lift was defective. Prime Equipment also introduced its own expert witnesses to testify that the lift was neither defective nor unreasonably dangerous. Those defense witnesses opined that the lift was safe when used properly, and that the American National Standard Institute's (ANSI) voluntary industry standards did not require solid guardrails until 1991, several years after the subject scissor lift was manufactured. Prime Equipment also presented evidence that Mr. Minter caused his own injuries; namely, that he failed to latch the chainlink closure or use a safety harness. Prime Equipment also filed a cross claim against Economy seeking indemnity for any liability arising out of a product liability judgment.

In response to the negligence claims, Prime Equipment relied on its defense to the product liability claim, and also prepared defenses based on comparative negligence and assumption of risk. In this connection, Prime Equipment planned to introduce evidence of Mr. Minter's history of marijuana use during work hours. Mr. Minter admitted during his deposition that he "occasionally" consumed marijuana while at work, and his medical report from after the accident showed that he had THC metabolites in his urine, which indicate recent exposure to marijuana. Mr. Minter testified that he was sober at the time of the accident and that the THC metabolites in his urine were from using marijuana two days before his fall. The defendants intended to introduce the evidence at trial, however, and let a jury decide whether Mr. Minter was intoxicated on the morning of the accident.

The state court never had an opportunity to address the merits of Mr. Minter's product liability and negligence claims. After four years of litigation, the plaintiff settled with G & G Leasing, Manhattan Construction, Sundial Painting and Silverado Foods. Once those parties were dropped from the litigation, there was complete diversity of citizenship between the plaintiff and the defendants. On March 20, 2001, the plaintiff voluntarily dismissed his state court complaint against the two remaining defendants, Prime Equipment and Economy, in order to refile in federal court.

The Federal District Court Proceedings

Mr. Minter retained new counsel and refiled in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma on March 20, 2002, exactly one year after the voluntary dismissal of his state court action. The federal complaint was significantly shorter than his state court complaint had been. Instead of compartmentalizing his various claims into categories of negligence, strict liability, and product liability, the federal complaint simply stated that Mr. Minter's injuries were caused by "defects in the design and manufacture of a scissor lift designed, manufactured and sold by Economy," and by "the failure of Prime Equipment Co., the owner, to properly inspect, repair and maintain the lift." Complaint 1. It also alleged that both defendants had failed "to warn Mr. Minter of dangers in the subject scissor lift." Id.

In what turns out to be an important fact in this appeal, Mr. Minter's federal complaint did not expressly set forth a product liability claim against Prime Equipment based on the company's alleged responsibility for alteration of the lift's guardrail system. The complaint did refer to Prime Equipment as having been "the owner" of the lift,2 which put Prime Equipment in the chain of distribution of his product liability claim against Economy. This might arguably have been sufficient under the liberal pleading standards of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 to provide notice of a retailer product liability claim against Prime Equipment. But there is no explicit mention in the complaint of a product liability claim based on alterations made to the lift after its manufacture.

On June 10, 2002, the parties submitted a Planning Meeting Report to the district court. The Report contained a summary of Mr. Minter's claims. This, too,...

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