Parks v. Ariens Co.

• Decision Date: 14 July 2016
• Docket Number: No. 15-2664,15-2664
• Citation: 829 F.3d 655
• Parties: Susan R. Parks, wife and next of kin of Timothy Glen Parks, deceased, and Executor of the Estate of Timothy Glen Parks, deceased, Plaintiff–Appellant v. Ariens Company, a Wisconsin Corporation, Defendant–Appellee
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

829 F.3d 655

Susan R. Parks, wife and next of kin of Timothy Glen Parks, deceased, and Executor of the Estate of Timothy Glen Parks, deceased, Plaintiff–Appellant

v.Ariens Company, a Wisconsin Corporation, Defendant–Appellee

No. 15-2664

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: February 11, 2016

Filed: July 14, 2016

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Aug. 19, 2016

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellant was John Dress Gehlhausen, of Aurora, CO. The following attorney(s) appeared on the appellant brief; Jason Gann, of Sioux City, IA.

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellee was I. Gregg Curry, IV, of Appleton, WI. The following attorney(s) appeared on the appellee brief; John C. Gray, of Sioux City, IA., Philip A Munroe, of Appleton, WI.

Before SHEPHERD, BEAM, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

KELLY, Circuit Judge.

This negligence case requires us to decide whether a product manufacturer can satisfy its duty to a purchaser by making available an optional safety feature that would have prevented the accident that gave rise to the suit. We agree with the district court¹ that it can, and that the defendant in this case did. We therefore affirm.²

I

Timothy Parks died from asphyxiation after the Gravely Promaster 152Z riding mower he was operating on his property fell off the edge of an embankment and rolled over on top of him.³ His wife, Susan Parks (Parks) brought this suit alleging, as relevant to this appeal, that the manufacturer of the 152Z, Ariens Company, was negligent for failing to equip the machine with a rollover protection system (ROPS).

At the time the 152Z in question was sold, the ROPS was an optional safety feature that consisted of a roll bar and seat belt; Ariens recommends its use for “slope operation.” The 152Z had initially been sold without a ROPS to an Ariens dealer called Robertson Implement; Rick Robertson, the owner of the dealership, said he declined the option of a ROPS because he preferred to leave the choice to his customers. Robertson then sold the 152Z to a man named Coby Camerer, who declined to buy the optional feature after discussing its availability with Robertson. Camerer used the mower for eleven months before trading it back in to Robertson and purchasing a different model.

A month later, in June 2006, Timothy Parks bought the 152Z previously owned by Camerer. When deposed after the accident, Robertson remembered discussing with Timothy Parks the handling of the mower and the terrain on which he planned to operate it, but couldn't recall whether he went over the availability and safety features of the ROPS. He was able to state, however, that his standard practice was to discuss the availability and safety features of the ROPS with each of his customers, and he had no reason to believe he deviated from that practice when he sold the 152Z to Timothy Parks. He also stated that his practice was to go over an Equipment Safety Check form with each customer and have the customer sign it; among the questions listed on the form are “Rollover protection system in place?” and “Rollover protection system rejected by customer?” The form was provided to Robertson by his insurance company, and he believed his insurance company required him to use it. Again, the record does not confirm whether Robertson went over the Equipment Safety Check form with Timothy Parks or how he answered—the forms from 2006 were thrown out in 2010 or 2011—but there is no evidence to suggest that Robertson didn't follow his usual practice of going over the checklist with Timothy Parks.

In June 2013, approximately seven years after purchasing the 152Z, Timothy Parks suffered the accident that resulted in his death. After his wife filed this suit, the district court granted summary judgment against her, holding that Ariens had satisfied any duty it owed Timothy Parks by offering the ROPS as an optional feature. Parks appeals, contending that Ariens was negligent for not including the ROPS with every 152Z it sold.

II

The doctrine that a manufacturer is, under certain circumstances, not negligent if a purchaser fails to buy optional safety equipment that would have prevented the accident originated with the New York intermediate appellate court decision in Biss v. Tenneco, Inc. , 64 A.D.2d 204, 409 N.Y.S.2d 874 (1978). That court, faced with a claim that a product sold without a ROPS was thereby defective, held that the manufacturer had not breached any duty it owed to the plaintiff because it had made the ROPS available as an optional feature and the plaintiff was “the party in the best position to exercise an intelligent judgment to make the trade-off between cost and function.” Id. at 877. The following year we stated that “we accept [the Biss ] theory as basically sound,” Wagner v. Int'l Harvester Co. , 611 F.2d 224, 231 (8th Cir. 1979) (applying Minnesota law), and since then a variety of courts have followed some variation of this “optional equipment doctrine,” see, e.g. , Austin v. Clark Equipment Co. , 48 F.3d 833, 837 (4th Cir. 1995) (applying Virginia law) ; Scallan v. Duriron Co. , 11 F.3d 1249, 1254 (5th Cir. 1994) (applying Louisiana law), superseded by statute as recognized in Perez v. Michael Weinig, Inc. , No. Civ. A. 304CV0448, 2005 WL 1630018, at *4–*6 (W.D. La. Jul. 7, 2005) ; Morrison v. Kubota Tractor Corp. , 891 S.W.2d 422, 428–29 (Mo. Ct. App. 1994) ; Butler v. Navistar Int'l Transp. Corp. , 809 F.Supp. 1202, 1209 (W.D. Va. 1991) (applying Virginia law) ; Anderson v. P.A. Radocy & Sons, Inc. , 865 F.Supp. 522, 531 (N.D. Ind. 1994) (applying Indiana law) ; Davis v. Caterpillar Tractor Co. , 719 P.2d 324, 326–27 (Colo. Ct. App. 1985).

Although courts differ in how they articulate the requirements for applying the optional equipment doctrine, the New York Court of Appeals's decision in Scarangella v. Thomas Built Buses, Inc. provides a typical formulation:

The product is not defective where the evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom show that: (1) the buyer is thoroughly knowledgeable regarding the product and its use and is actually aware that the safety feature is available; (2) there exist normal circumstances of use in which the product is not unreasonably dangerous without the optional equipment; and (3) the buyer is in a position, given the range of uses of the product, to balance the benefits and the risks of not having the safety device in the specifically contemplated circumstances of the buyer's use of the product. In such a case, the buyer, not the manufacturer, is in the superior position to make the risk-utility assessment, and a well-considered decision by the buyer to dispense with the optional safety equipment will excuse the manufacturer from liability.

93 N.Y.2d 655, 695 N.Y.S.2d 520, 717 N.E.2d 679, 683 (1999). As Scarangella recognizes, under many circumstances a product will be capable of multiple uses, some of which are reasonably safe even without the optional equipment. And oftentimes the buyer will be in a better position than the manufacturer to know whether the machine will be put to such a use. In such situations, it makes sense to give the buyer the option of foregoing the add-on without subjecting the manufacturer to negligence liability, as long as it can be determined that the buyer made an informed choice.

Because this case is governed by Iowa law, we are obliged to follow any on-point decisions by the Iowa Supreme Court. See Leonard v. Dorsey & Whitney, LLP , 553 F.3d 609, 612 (8th Cir. 2009). Absent any such decisions, “we must determine what that court would probably hold if it were called upon to decide the issue,” looking to “relevant state precedents, analogous decisions, considered dicta, scholarly works, and any other reliable data tending convincingly to show how the highest court in the state would decide the issue.” Missouri v. City of Glasgow , 152 F.3d 802, 805–06 (8th Cir. 1998) (citation omitted).

The Iowa Supreme Court has not yet considered the optional equipment doctrine, but both the policy reasons we recognized in Wagner and the popularity of the optional equipment doctrine lead us to conclude that the court would adopt it.⁴ Parks nonetheless advances a number of reasons why she believes it would not. First, she notes that the doctrine is not listed among the statutory defenses to product liability claims. See Iowa Code § 668.12. True, but the optional equipment doctrine is not an affirmative defense to negligence. Rather, the doctrine is a means for determining when the manufacturer has fulfilled its duty to the buyer.

Second, she suggests that the optional equipment doctrine is equivalent to “assumption of the risk,” a traditional negligence defense, which she says was abolished by the Iowa Supreme Court in Coker v. Abell–Howe Co. , 491 N.W.2d 143, 148 (Iowa 1992). What Coker abolished, however, was what it called the “secondary meaning” of assumption of risk, namely “an affirmative defense” that contends “that the plaintiff acted unreasonably in encountering a known risk.” Coker , 491 N.W.2d at 146–47....