Trailmobile, Inc. v. Smith, 72707
| Decision Date | 04 December 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. 72707,72707 |
| Parties | , Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 11,246 TRAILMOBILE, INC. v. SMITH et al. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
A. Terry Sorrells, Christopher N. Shuman, for appellant.
David Paul Smith, B. Randall Blackwood, for appellees.
Appellees Phillip and Marsha Smith filed this products liability suit to recover for injuries and losses they sustained when Phillip slipped and fell while working atop a tanker-trailer manufactured by appellant Trailmobile, Inc. When the trial court denied its motion for summary judgment, appellant sought and was granted interlocutory review of the trial court's action.
At the time of his injury, Phillip Smith was employed as a tanker-trailer driver for a firm which manufactured a liquid solvent. After the solvent was pumped into his tanker-trailer, it was appellant's duty to secure the four dome lids on top of the trailer by climbing the ladder affixed to the tanker and proceeding along a catwalk atop the trailer to each dome lid. As he was moving from the second to the third lid, Smith slipped on solvent on the catwalk, lost his balance, and fell on his right knee, injuring it and his hip.
1. In their amended complaint, appellees alleged that the tanker-trailer was defectively designed in that it had no guardrails atop it; it had no individual ladders providing direct access to each dome lid; it had no semi-convex curvature at the apex of the single ladder leading to the top of the tanker-trailer; and its design failed to eliminate the need for the operator to leave ground level in order to use the tanker-trailer. In opposition to appellant's motion for summary judgment, appellees submitted the affidavit of an expert witness who opined that the tanker-trailer was defectively designed, and cited the aforementioned alleged deficiencies. However, an expert opinion that a product is defectively designed, in and of itself, does not require the denial of summary judgment to the manufacturer. See, e.g., Stodghill v. Fiat-Allis, etc., Machinery, 163 Ga.App. 811, 295 S.E.2d 183 (1982). Instead, Id. at...
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